


Keep You In the Dark (You Know They All Pretend)

by Mauisse_Flowers



Series: Adventures in Self-Inserts. Or "Hannah's Worlds" [8]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, F/M, Gen, Major Original Character(s), Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Stress Baking, Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, Women Being Awesome, Women Supporting Women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 16:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9080965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauisse_Flowers/pseuds/Mauisse_Flowers
Summary: That one self-insert that got out of hand and I wrote it for self-insert week this past year. Features a shit ton of friends and acquaintances and quite a few headcanons.





	

Mauisse watches Elijah move about the room, commanding respect. She feels the urge to respect him, but she isn’t scared. Damon said it would get her killed one day, how she wasn’t scared of vampires or werewolves or any other monster that could come her way. Mauisse tended to take Damon’s (and Stefan’s) words with a grain of salt since figuring out they were attracted to her for sharing another woman’s face. It disgusted her and made her feel nasty, so she’d cut and curled her hair, later dying it a lighter blonde with red through it. It was also when she stopped being scared of the supernatural and was just plain angry at it.

“I only have one favor to ask of you,” Mauisse finally spoke up after he explained his plan. “It’s a bit two-sided.”

“Yes, Mauisse?” He questioned, and his eyes looked a bit warmer, almost fonder. She hated it. All these stupid vampires saw were Anastasia or Tiata.

“If I end up dying, don’t let me be buried here,” she tells him. “My parents are buried in Florida, that’s where I’m from, and that’s where I want to be. I don’t want to be buried around these hypocrites. If they really cared they’d make the drive to see a grave.”

“And the other side?” There’s something in his eyes that changed at her request. Like he’s realized something crucial about her.

“If I live, whether human or vampire,” she takes a breath, and shoves down the quake in her voice, the fear of the unknown. “If I live, get me the hell out of here. Take me with you, drop me into the middle of the ocean, do something so long as I don’t stay here. I’m tired of all these people doing things that I didn’t ask for, or I told them not to do, and then they expect me to be grateful, to be happy, when two years ago they didn’t know or care about me. Or in the case of Damon and Stefan, are after me for my face. I’m tired of this supernatural crap and I want to be left alone.”

He’s quiet a moment, contemplating her words, and then he nods. “I will do this for you, you have my word.”

She smiles at him, and when Damon later tries to force his blood down her throat she stabs him with the pencil she had been using and runs. Elijah catches her when he arrives to check on her, and she’s sobbing with a red soaked mouth. He panics for a moment, thinking she was forced to turn, but hears her human heart pounding in her chest as she gasps out that Damon tried to force his blood into her system.

She never tasted it, “I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe,” she sobs, shaking and unable to hold herself up. “I won’t be turned, I won’t be forced to live forever.”

There is a rage in Elijah’s heart that Damon would force this young woman to do such a thing, to take her consent away. And he thinks of his family at that moment, not of Tiata or Anastasia, and how they weren’t given a choice. Their father just slaughtered them like cattle.

And he decides she will live, but not as a vampire, as a human, and she will not be forced to be compared to the doppelgängers before her. She will live free of such a cruelty he’s realizing affects more than just he and the few Anastasia has scorned in her 500 years of life. This crying young woman will not be put into an early grave or have the opportunity to die of old age taken away.  
He will make sure of it as he will that she does not stay in this town she despises. He may not love her, but he has come to care for her and her hatred for what she has no choice but to be.

* * *

“You look just like them,” Klaus says, and Mauisse clenches her teeth. She tries not to say anything mean, but it’s her last few hours of life. She’s throwing caution to the wind.

“Fuck you,” she spits out. “If you didn’t notice, my hair is nothing like theirs.”

“It isn’t the hair I require,” he takes her hand, and she steps away from the safety that has become Elijah. “Only your blood.”

She looks away when he leans in to smell her neck, just as Elijah had done months earlier. To make sure she really was the human doppelgänger with her hair dyed strangely. Mauisse trembles, wanting to both run and pass out. She doesn’t want this. Mauisse wants to live and to die and to exist and to not exist all in those few moments. Unlike then, she feels this monster would rip her throat out while the one behind her had been merely curious.

“Your heart beats like a hummingbirds. I’d fear for your life if it wasn’t to be cut short so soon.”

She tastes bile in the back of her throat. But she couldn’t throw up anything substantial if she did. The only thing she’s eaten today was ice-cream Jen had bought from the store. She’d shared it with Spot, the last meal she’d ever have and she shared it with her dog, crying into the bowl. Her dog had curled against her, nudging her with his nose, and she’d not even finished the ice-cream because she’d hugged Spot and begun to sob into his scruffy fur. She’d asked Elijah to take Spot if she did die, and she’d whispered in a hoarse mess of tears and snot that he was going to a good owner after tonight.

“Let’s just get this other with,” she tells Klaus. “I’m done with this bullshit.”

“Quiet a vulgar one, dearest.” Klaus throws his head back and laughs. “I quite like this one. Maybe you can have some of my blood, and I can show you how fun it is to be undead.”

Her lips curl back. “No thanks. I already turned down two offers this week.”

“Pity.” Klaus wraps an arm around her waist, and she muffled a scream with clenched shut eyes as they blur away from her house.

* * *

Mauisse isn’t surprised when she’s informed by Caroline that Elijah had meant to kill Klaus, but he didn’t when Klaus mentioned their family was still alive. If her brother and sister had ever cared about her, she would have done the same. But her siblings didn’t so she wouldn’t.

She’s angry though, that she had died for nothing. She had so wanted, in those last moments where Klaus held her in a lover’s embrace and drained her dry, to see her parents again. That’s all Mauisse had wanted, and the one supernatural entity that she trusted besides herself had failed her. Because he had slipped her a fucking vile of some life-sustaining shit and now here she sat in Chemistry, learning to balance elemental equations.

And now Spot would never get an owner who wasn’t always angry and in need of yelling at something other than a stuffed animal so would lock him from her room so he didn’t get the brunt of her rage. Mauisse really was like her father, but at least she didn’t get living things involved.

And when summer came and passed, she was prepared to let this all go. So long as Klaus stayed gone, and the Salvatores never came back. So long as Caroline stopped trying to rope her into the Student Council and Bonnie quit making her feel like crap for Klaus not dying. Elena, Noelle, and Charmaine were the only people she spoke to. Her aunt and uncle got to stay oblivious to her being killed and that half the town was “special.”

Then Klaus shows up after she’s let go, and is helping her three friends and their friends with the senior pranks (she liked all the ideas, honestly). And he ruins everything.

Mauisse wants him to kill her permanently this time, but he won’t. Not until he knows how to make hybrids. And she’s so, so wrathful. So much that she starts crying and yells at him to just kill her already, to put her out of her misery, to finally end her pain because that’s what she’d wanted the night of the ritual, to stop being compared to people and to just be another body in Florida soil like Elijah had promised.

And people stare, they all stare and even Klaus is unsure of how to proceed for a moment, never having really encountered someone who actually wanted to die because she just wanted to end the pain. And then he latches onto the end and hisses, “Elijah is dead.”

And Mauisse isn’t surprised. She’s gotten used to being let down and so she isn’t very angry about that. Mauisse had learned long ago to not let her hopes get up and then crushed.

“I figured as much.” She sounds so tired, even to her own ears. And it’s not the ‘I’m still sleepy tired.’ It’s the 'I just want to stop existing’ tired and Klaus doesn’t understand where the cussing spitfire went to with her red and gold hair now turned simply gold.

“Hm, I think I will take you with me,” Klaus murmurs, and she scowls. “Death seems too good for you.” _You seem too suicidal, let me show you how to live_.

And she doesn’t want to, she wants to die and rot in the ground. That’s all she wants.

Klaus quickly comes to learn that making hybrids requires Mauisse’s blood, and she makes to escape. Not run, running would imply fear, but escaping means you just don’t want something bad to happen. She just wants to die. She doesn’t want this. Mauisse doesn’t want to be a slave. She wants to go away, forever.

“If you quit trying to run, I’ll return Elijah to you and I won’t kill all your friends.”

At this point, she doesn’t care anymore. She might care about Elena, Noelle, and Charmaine, but she doesn’t have the ability to completely care anymore. And Elijah betrayed her. She had forgiven him because she understood but he’d betrayed her. He didn’t deserve it.

“I don’t give a shit about him.” Mauisse snarls, and Klaus laughs again.

“I know that’s not true.” He tells her, and rage ignites like liquid fire through her veins. Anastasia has probably felt this wrath before, and Tiata too. “Just as you denying how much you love those three friends of yours.”

His eyes are on Elena, Charmaine, and Noelle. Her human friend, witch friend and now hybrid friend. Something like disgust curdles in her because he’s right. He’s right and she wants to rip him apart for being a know-it-all.

“And look at it his way: People will know you aren’t Anastasia.” Klaus shrugs. “Everyone knows I want her dead, and you certainly aren’t.”

She hesitates. Klaus tries again. “You won’t have to stay here, seeing as I certainly don’t want to stay. And you won’t have to give much blood because I only need a drop or two per werewolf.” His fingers trail down her arm and she wrenches her arm away. Thankfully he stops, anger flashing sulfur in his eyes but quickly dying. “All you need to do is say 'yes,’ dearest.”

It’s tempting. She wants away from here so bad. But she doesn’t want to go from one supernatural world into another. She doesn’t want to become some pet for Klaus to own. There’s also what happens if she says no. While she doesn’t cherish many people here, she cherishes enough, and even though she hates her brother and sister they’re still family and he’d track them down and kill them too.

Mauisse quakes like a frightened animal. (“You know, you make me think of a mouse,” Damon once told her after a glass bottle fell and shattered on the floor and scared her, leaving Mauisse shaking for minutes after. “Yeah, you’re a mouse. Tiny and easily frightened.” And then she said, “Don’t be a bitch, Damon. I’m something else. Like a polar bear. You should be scared of me.”) And in that moment she is a mouse, just like Damon said. And she should be scared of the big bad wolf, because he could eat her whole and still have room for her friends and family.

“I’ll go with you, so long as you do these few things for me.” Mauisse swallows, pushing how heavy his hands have becoming on her arm and shoulder. It’s the grip of a victorious man.

“What would they be, dearest?”

“One: you stop calling me dearest and any other nickname you’ve got. I have a name, use it.”

“Mauisse, no!” Charmaine cries, but she can’t fight back because Klaus is willing to kill Mauisse before letting Charmaine win. He’d kill Mauisse and lose his army if it meant getting one up on the young witch.

“And what else?”

Mauisse swallows. “Spot comes with. I won’t leave without him. And you compel my family to think I ran away.”

“Is that all?”

Noelle is trembling with rage, wanting to attack Klaus and hardly able to reign in her werewolf side. Mauisse stares at her friend, asking her to not act.

“No. Two more things.” She breathes deeply, and asks they forgive her. “The day I die, you make sure I’m buried beside my parents in Florida. I never want to see this place again. And my last request… you don’t hurt the ones I love, ever. Or I’ll find a way to ruin your plans.”

His nails bite into her skin, about to deny her and kill someone, but he realizes the last request is useless because half won’t know where she is because she’s 'runaway’ and the other half just won’t know where she is, and a spell to shadow her whereabouts will make it impossible for the little witch to find her.

“Very well, _Mauisse_.” Klaus breathes. “We leave soon as you’ve packed.”

Confusion colors her face, thinking he’d have taken her right then. “'Soon as I’ve packed’?”

His eyes gleam in the low lights of the school gymnasium. His arms move, and she’s lifted up into his arm like a bride. She grabs at his shirt. She can hearCharmaine scream her name, and Elena’s gasp. Noelle is staring at where her friend had stood, where the one person who had never shied from her after learning of her status as a werewolf and what happened for her to become one used to stand.

* * *

Despite being a murderous asshole, Klaus is surprisingly nice when he wants to be. He helps her pack, marveling at how many books she owns and the fact she’s read them all so much that a couple are falling apart. He’s also disgruntled at the amount of stuffed polar bears she has. Not random stuffed animals, just polar bears, and she won’t part with them despite his false promises to purchase her new ones.

She takes minimal clothing, just her favorite dresses, shirts, skirts, and all of her five pairs of jeans. Socks are shoved into a pant leg, and she makes him turn around when she packs her underwear and two sports bras (there may be a bit of sniping for how little it matters when he now, for lack of a better term, owns her). The items are stuffed (Klaus goes back and folds them) into a duffle bag that has most of her small polar bears and a couple of her favorite movies. Another bag is for the rest of her bears and movies and writing books. The last is filled with her books, the last couple shoved into her bag. She leaves behind her driver’s license when Klaus says he’ll simply have a new one made for her, for her new identity, and then he takes the book and toy bags when she goes to lift them up.

Mauisse hears her aunt and uncle coming in down stairs, and she feels guilt at what is about to happen. But she can’t say anything, because it needs to happen. So she shoulders her duffle bag and picks up Spot (his bowl and leashes and sweater are in her purse with a book for the road. She doesn’t know how long the drive or plane ride or whatever they’ll be doing will be.

“Ready, d- Mauisse?” Klaus asks, and his eyes don’t flash with a threat. He already knows. She wouldn’t run, she couldn’t any longer.

“No.” She sighs, Spot nuzzles her in an attempt to comfort. “But I don’t have a choice.”

“No, you don’t.” He agrees almost gently, and heads out the room. Head low, she follows him.

Mauisse finds it is surprisingly easy to watch her guardians be compelled. She stands to the side, watching as her uncle gawks at Klaus, and her aunt opens her mouth, mid-demand on who he is. Then they go silent, staring straight past Klaus as he orders them to be quiet. And she stands there as he alters their memories, makes them forget that they were there.

Mauisse writes a note as he deals with them, explaining how she couldn’t take the pity anymore, how she loved them but hated their pity and the town and how everything was so fake and bland and small. That she was leaving. Taking her dog and things and leaving.

They’d wonder how she took all of the things she valued with her, but they’d never figure out how. They’d just wonder why, why, why. And wasn’t that enough? To leave them wondering, knowing it was fruitless as Klaus told them that they’d try and try and try but never find her, and be left feeling she’d found a better, happier place.

Mauisse didn’t think she would as her guardians walked up to bed too early to wake in the morning and find her gone.

* * *

They drive.

Klaus thinks it’s a good idea, because he could stop the car to show her what made this earth so worth living on. Mauisse doesn’t take to any of it, but Spot does find trees to mark and butterflies to chase and wild cats to greet. So she doesn’t complain, because at least one person in her life is happy.

She quickly learns that she can’t hate Klaus when he seems so content to drive and talk to her. She keeps her nose in a book, Spot in her lap either sleeping or looking out the window with excited pants. Mauisse gives customary 'hmm’ and 'yeah’s when there is a question, and at times Klaus seems a bit… irked by her behavior, but so far he’s let it slide.

“What were your parents like?” He finally asks as they’re passing through Pennsylvania.

Her fingers go slack on the book, a book that is a steampunk retelling of The Nutcracker, but she doesn’t drop it because it would fall on Spot and wake him. She slides her Sandman bookmark into place and lifts her head, staring at him as her book finds a home on the console. She swallows, wondering what she could say.

“My dad had anger issues.” Mauisse decides to supply, and there is something in his eyes. “He was really good at not… at not hurting me. He doted on me, actually. My brother and sister weren’t so lucky, nor my mom. She was gentle, the kind of person who’d fix a cut on your arm with antiseptic, a bandaid, and a kiss, but could then turn around and tear you down with words alone. But she was too soft spoken, still too in love with my father. She let him scream and yell, and let him smack my sister and hit my brother.” Hannah ran her hands through her dog’s fur. “I have anger issues too, but I’m better at controlling them. Usually. Sometimes I slip and I’ll have Spot sleep elsewhere, because I’m scared I’ll do to him what my dad did to my mom. I know he was a terrible dad to my siblings, and I’ll always be angry about that, but… there were times where he was tender toward them, where he helped my sister with her math or my brother learn how to take care of a garden, and I remember those moments and I can’t be angry. It’s tiring, holding in my emotions, but it’s worse to let them fester.”

Klaus is quiet, he listened to everything. And what came between, too. He thinks she probably was just as effected by her father’s anger as the rest of her family, she simply didn’t say so.

“And your brother and sister?”

Mauisse doesn’t respond to that at all. She even seems to quit breathing, heart pounding in her chest.

“I know siblings are always supposed to love each other, no matter what bullshit you put them through, or they put you through, but I can say with absolute certainty I hate them. The worst part is I still love them, and couldn’t stand to see them killed or hurt.” Mauisse’s words are slow, tired. “They should tease you, taunt you, make your life a living hell because they love you but hurt any other asshole who tries to do the same. But mine… they did it in earnest, because my dad was horrible to them. And I was teased at times, but other times they got vicious, cutting my hair when I slept or cutting holes in my clothes, nitpicking me and punching me a little too hard, starting fights so I’d accidentally break something and get in trouble. I hate them and never want to see them again, but I don’t want what happened to me to happen to them. I try to hope I’m better than wanting that to happen.”

She reached to the side, lowering the seat back. “I think I’ll take a nap. Wake me up at the next gas station, please.”

Klaus opens his mouth to say something, not expecting the young woman to word vomit all over him, but she tugged Spot up to lay against her breast and drew her coat over her head. She’d effectively shut him out before he could tell her to fuck all of the toxic people in her life and live it how she wanted. And then he belatedly remembers that she can’t, because he now has her. In a way, he is the origin of most toxins, being a bastard himself.

Mauisse at one point begins to hum to the quiet rock playing on the radio, Spot snoring (such a strange dog, to think itself human and to be as oddly unafraid as his owner) just a fraction quieter than her. Eventually he pulls into a gas station to fill up the car and Mauisse wakes when it comes to a jolting stop.

She takes Spot for a quick walk and gives him water and food, asking Klaus to watch the dog as she goes in to buy something to eat for herself. He decides to join her, compelling anyone who tried to tell him the dog couldn’t come with. There’s a small restaurant branching off to the side, called Cracker Barrel, and decides the human needs something other than a protein drink and a bag of chips.

Mauisse is surprised by his decision for a moment, but she doesn’t say anything about it. He’s touchy, and unlike her he’d lash out at his kindness being pointed out. So they sit down, Spot resting obediently at the seat she drags over for him (she ignores Klaus’s grimace).

Klaus peruses the menu, but Mauisse seems to have been to these kind of places enough times to have an order down. She orders an orange juice to his water, and gets breakfast to his burger and fries. Mauisse looks excited, like she hasn’t been to a Cracker Barrel in forever, but she never says a word to him.

“You’re quiet, like a mouse,” Klaus comments, and he’s watching her like a predator who’s found a pretty piece of prey to rip into. “To me, at least.”

“I don’t have much to say, and I don’t know you.” Mauisse points out, sipping her OJ contentedly. “I might say more if I did.”

He doesn’t touch his meal when it arrives. He watches her eat instead, or eyes the throats of people around her. “My father beat me. Or, my supposed father. He was harsh on all of us, but me the most. I think he was aware that my mother had had an affair and I wasn’t his son, or at least an inkling.”

Mauisse hates Klaus. Doesn’t mean she isn’t inclined to reach for the hand resting on the table. She decides not to. Not yet.

“I’m the middle child, as well.” He explains. “There is the eldest, Finn, then Elijah, me, our younger brother Kol, and then Rebekah, our only sister. When we were human, as I’m sure Elijah has told you this story of our making and why it came to pass, we had another brother, Henrik.”

Mauisse does feel a twinge of pain for that. She was the youngest of her siblings, and the pain in Elijah’s face was… she understood it despite their roles being reversed. She often took the big sister or maternal role for her friends. It was strange to see Klaus so bare before her as he spoke of the same topic.

“You know my binding story.” He gave a wry smirk. “Our mother quickly realized her mistake, and turned our father into a vampire hunter. To this day, I run from him. And my siblings would too, were they around. She was right though, we are monsters.”

On a different day, Mauisse would agree with him. She does reach over then, fingers touching the back of his hand lightly before pulling back. Her eyes keep his for that one moment, and then she takes up her fork to eat some more of the hash browns on her plate.

“If you were a monster, I don’t think I’d be here willingly, my friends still alive.” She says it flippantly, but the words hang heavy in the air. It’s a declaration. Not of trust, she would probably never trust him, but of understanding. She wasn’t beaten or abused by her parents, but she was certainly abused by family. And she had some of his issues, issues she didn’t let lead her as he did his. For such a small human, she had a surprisingly strong reign of her emotions.

“No, no you wouldn’t,” he agrees, and finally picks up a fry.

* * *

They go to New Orleans.

They travel for two weeks, and he purchases her new clothes along the way (most of which she chose, much to his disgruntlement) and she asks to get a hair cut with her hair dyed back to its color (Klaus indulges her, seeing how she seemed to see her hair as a hassle the more humid it got). Spot is eager to not be cooped up in car for so long, and even Mauisse breaths deeper when Klaus brings the car to a stop at an old, abandoned plantation home. She jumps out the car and flops over into the tall grass as Spot goes chasing after flies. Klaus watches them with a twinge of amusement and annoyance.

“What are you doing?”

"Enjoying the fresh air!” She declares.

“There are likely snakes big enough to eat that rat of yours in the grass. And poisonous enough to kill me.”

Mauisse shoots up, and calls Spots name until he goes loping for her. She quickly picks him up, holding him as a mother does her baby.

“I will have a person come out and clean up the lawn.” Klaus explains. “The orchard will be blooming soon, so you won’t be short on those lovely apples you love so much. The house will need to be cleaned and dusted, but we can stay in a hotel until its finished.”

Mauisse groans, burying her face in Spot’s fur. “Aren’t you tired of driving around? It’s been two weeks.”

“Yes, and I need to arrange some business in town. You can’t stay in a place that would kill you faster than having your heart ripped out.”

Disgruntled, she gets back into the car. Spot whines, watching the plantation disappear into the background, and she rubs his head with a gentle murmur of, “I’m sorry, baby boy.”

* * *

Apparently there’s more going on in New Orleans than Klaus was letting on, or more than he knew, which he learns upon entering when a vampire tries to kidnap Mauisse and upon learning who he was, reveal that a vampire named Marcel is looking out for Anastasia. After dispatching the vampire, Klaus quickly takes Mauisse and drops her off somewhere safe (a hotel room), where she argues for either her freedom or to come with him. He explains that she could very well likely get herself caught, and they would torture her for information before killing her.

“It’s not pleasant, Mauisse. I taught Marcel all he knows.”

“As long as I’m with you, it won’t matter!” She wants to punch someone for thinking her Anastasia, she wants to claw out their eyes and tell them to guess who was who then. Anastasia, the vain woman that she was, would never cut or dye or do anything to her hair that Mauisse had done. That was a fact.

“Yes, it will, because apparently no here is aware that I am an Original. They will take you without a second thought.”

“I am aware you still want to die, Mauisse, but maybe another time you can come into the Quarter.”

She puffs out her cheeks, like a rodent with food in her mouth. “I’m tired of being cooped up in things. I want _out_ , Klaus. Let me out.”

Klaus thinks of Rebekah right then, and decides he’ll undagger her first once this is all over. It will give Mauisse someone to interact with and maybe Rebekah won’t hate this doppelgänger like the other one (seeing as this one has no interest in him beyond needing shelter and food and someone to take her dog in the off chance she dies).

“If I take you into the Garden District after this is over, will you shut up?” He asks, and she nods. She loves flowers. She wonders what the area would smell like after dark, but he likely would only take her during he day. “Good. There’s going to be a vampire outside your door who’ll get you whatever you want. Room service, some boy to toss around with,” her nose wrinkles and he doesn’t miss the motion, “more books. Whatever it is. But you stay _in here_ until I return.”

He never took the vervain ring she wore away from her. It was a simple Claddagh that once belonged to her mother, and Charmaine had made a small back compartment where she put vervain and a cloaking spell. His eyes weren’t dilating as they stared her down, though, so he wasn’t going to compel her.

“When this is over, we will go to the plantation. You may also have a friend,” her eyes light up even as he adds, “of my choosing.”

“Can it be–”

He’s gone before she finishes.

“– a girl?”

* * *

He comes back a day later bloody and disgusting and she wrinkles her nose. Behind him is someone she never expected to see again, and she bristles.

Elijah looks surprised to see her, and is then distracted by her striding across the room and punching him in the mouth. Not the eye or nose, the mouth. He feels blood explode in his mouth where his teeth were forced down and scraping against his tongue, and he blinks, stunned and feeling a well of hurt inside.

“You can take your promises and oaths and bullshit and shove it up your ass!” She yells before Klaus is pushing her back while laughing. “I trusted you! You acted like the most honorable person and I trusted you, you son of a bitch!”

Spot is tensed on the bed, glaring at Elijah. For good measure, the tiny dog is growling, too.

“You said a friend!” Mauisse cries out, stalking to her bed upon realizing she wouldn’t get another hit in. “And he is not my friend, not anymore. He let me die for nothing. He doesn’t have the honor of being a friend.”

“You would do well to remember your place, Mauisse,” Elijah finally regains his bearings. And he does see her shiver, does hear her heart jump in terror, but she doesn’t back down. She turns her head to snarl at him.

“Yeah, that I’m your brother’s precious blood bag. Try killing me now, you asshole.” She sits on her bed, and picks up her dog. Mauisse rubs Spot’s head, hiding her face in the fur along his neck. The salty smell of tears permeates the air quickly. She doesn’t look at them, just lets Spot whimper and try to turn to lick at her face.

“Klaus, can we leave yet?” She asks, voice muffled. “I’m tired.”

Klaus looks slightly apologetic as he declares they won’t be for some time yet. She lets out a gusty sigh, and the smell of tears becomes heavier. She mutters something, just a breath of words neither male can catch.

“I recommend that, if you’re tired, then you go to bed. Reading will keep you up.” Klaus says. “I simply came to tell you that we’d be longer than I anticipated. But I promise that you will be moved to the plantation once it’s finished.”

Her head lifts at that, eyes bright in hope and tears. Her cheeks are red with tears but she doesn’t look ashamed. “Really?”

"Yes.” He gives a single nod. “With Elijah here, things will get fixed… easier.”  
Mauisse snorts derisively. Even Klaus winces. “He wasn’t the friend you promised, was he?”

“No.” He doesn’t say anything more. “Elijah, come. We have things to attend to.”

She watches them leave with something akin to longing, wishing to be outside and free. Her eyes move to the balcony of the hotel room, and she wonders.

* * *

Mauisse sits at the bar. She doesn’t order a drink, she just watches everyone. Spot rests in her purse, head poking out and watching everyone with excitement.

“What’s a young girl like you doing in here?”

Mauisse turns her head, facing a blonde woman. She looks friendly, and Mauisse wouldn’t mind having her as a friend.

“Waiting for a couple friends. I got lost and they told me to come here if I did.” She lies casually.

“Oh?” She raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“Yep!” Mauisse nods, holding out a hand. “I’m Mauisse.”

“Camille, but you, Mauisse, can call me Cami,” Cami introduces herself.

“You can call me Ma.” Mauisse replies. “Do you have lemonade?” She asks a moment later. “I’ve got a couple dollars and I’m thirsty.”

“Yeah, I’ll get you some from the back. It’ll be on the house.” Cami smiles at Mauisse, who’s eyes glow with happiness. She’d looked so nervous and scared and sad before, and now she looked a bit happier, though Cami suspected it was fleeting. The girl looked depressed.

When Cami returned, setting the drink before her new friend, she asked, “So, how long until your friends get here?”

“A while. They probably don’t know they’ve lost me yet.” Mauisse replies. “I’m a lot shorter than them and get lost easily.”

“Alright. I’ll let you stay,” Cami gives her a stern look, “but no drinks other than lemonade and water.”

“That’s okay. Could I get some water for my dog?”

“Your _dog_?”

Mauisse nods, and tilts her head down toward her purse. Spot rested in the purse that was in her lap, watching all the people there in fascination. He turned big brown eyes to Cami, and pants, mouth open in what she’d guess was a smile. She smiles back.

“Him being here is health code violation.”

“I didn’t bring a leash, and he cries when I leave him at the house.” Mauisse smiles, and Cami rolls her eyes.

“Oh, fine, fine. But no bringing him back– when you’re _of age_.”

Cami goes to get a small bowl that Mauisse pours water in, holding it up to Spot to drink from. The two women talk, and patrons come and go as the two learn about each other.

It’s nearing one in the morning, and Mauisse is writing on a notepad, already on her forth page, when a man comes up. She doesn’t tense, she’s too used to it for that, but a scowl does mar her face when speaks.

“Hello, Anastasia.”

She sets down the pad, and is glad Cami is off serving people. She turns to face the vampire, and she so wants to punch him in the face and tear him apart and scream that _I am not Anastasia!_ over and over until everyone who’s ever met her understands she isn’t the only one with this ruby-cheeked face and sweet hazel eyes.

“Last time I checked, my name is Mauisse. And that bitch is no where near New Orleans.”

She’s glaring at him, the urge to hit him growing stronger. Mauisse puts it down, telling herself she’s better than that, better than her father and grandfather and all the angry Irishmen before that. She wouldn’t be like them.

“Last time I checked, the only person with your face was named Anastasia.”

She only has so much patients.

“I just said that my name, you stupid motherfucker, is Mauisse. And unlike her, I’m _human_. So back off before I call for help.”

“From who? Your new bartender friend? I could drain her dry,” he hisses.

Her hand balls into a fist, and she can see herself as she pulls back her arm, thumb along her bottom fingers as she’d learned, ready to give him a good what-for. She’s stopped from going through with this vision by a hand on her shoulder, and Cami’s gentle voice asking what’s wrong as one lands on the vampire’s.

“Well, well, well.”

Klaus’s voice creeps down Mauisse’s spine. And she knows she’s in trouble, but she knows the vampire who tried to pick a fight with her and threatened her new friend was in deeper. So she smiles, her anger not gone but surely somewhat quenched because he’d get his what-for.

“Are you trying to hurt my baby sister, young man?”

Even that won’t make her angry. Her smile just grows.

“Klaus,” the vampire stutters, and turns to look at him.

Their eyes connect. Mauisse can see Klaus’s grin, wide and vicious, from over the vampire’s shoulder.

“You are going to walk out that door and when day comes, you are going to be in a nice, sunny, secluded spot and you’ll burn.” Klaus orders quietly under the chatter of the bar, and the vampire gives a dumb nod of his head and walks to the door.

Mauisse can see Klaus fully now. Elijah stands just behind him. Both look like disapproving parents or older siblings, and she scowls at them.

“Are you Ma’s friends?” Cami eyes the two warily. She doesn’t know what Klaus said, but it couldn’t have been good. She’d met Klaus earlier in the day, but not the man with him. They look to be vaguely related, but Mauisse hold’s zero resemblance to them despite Klaus declaring her his “baby sister.”

“Yes.” Elijah nods, and comes close. Mauisse is glad she’s not facing Cami because her glare could kill a mortal man. “We are. She’s our younger sister, as you could guess from Niklaus’s words.

"Yeah….. And how are you gonna prove that?” Cami asks, and Mauisse tenses a fraction.

“We were raised in the foster system,” Mauisse says automatically, knowing she hadn’t told Cami a lick of her background, just that she had siblings and she’d _had_ parents. “We grew up with the same foster family and when Elijah turned 18, he adopted me and I’ve been with them since.”

Mauisse smiles at Cami, glad to have saved her from being compelled. Spot growled at Elijah, and Klaus reached out to pet the dog, easing its tense little body.

Cami searches Mauisse’s eyes for a lie, then nods slowly. “Alright. You be careful, okay? Or I’m gonna track you down and scold you.”

“Yes, Cami.” Mauisse promises, finishing her lemonade and getting off the stool.

Mauisse waves as they leave.

“That was extremely dangerous and stupid of you,” Elijah says first, and she scowls at him.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Elijah. Last time I checked, I only asked for a favor.” She crosses her arms.

“You are acting like a petulant child.” Elijah’s eyes are sharper now, but she won’t back down despite– or maybe because of– her fear. “You need to grow up, Mauisse Flowers, and realize that there is more at stake than just your life.”

“If Klaus hasn’t told you, I’m simply shocked.” Mauisse sneered. “I _want_ to die. The only reason I’m not is because he wants my blood to make hybrids. Otherwise, I think I’d have cut my throat my now.”

She stomps ahead. “And stop trying to talk to me. I thought it was obvious I hate you.”

“You can’t hate forever.” Elijah sighs. “It becomes tiring after some.”

“Give her time,” Klaus shrugs. “After two weeks in the car with me, she warmed up. Doing the same with her might help or maybe she really does despise you, Elijah. Either way, I win this time.”

“She is not a possession.” Elijah says as they walk.

“Certainly not,” Klaus flippantly agrees.

* * *

It takes undaggering Klaus’s other siblings to really start to take back control of the Quarter. Mauisse is moved to the plantation amidst the chaos awakening them all together brings, so she doesn’t know what’s happening until they all appear at the front door. Klaus and Elijah have been invited in (because Klaus had her sign the deed as a form of protection against Marcel and his lackeys), so she’s stuck staring at a clearly hungry vampire, a blonde one who hates her face (and _her_ for it), and an obviously uncomfortable one. Klaus is waiting for her to decide, standing with Elijah just inside the door behind her.

“The hungry one worries me,” she looks over at Klaus, who cracks a wide grin.

“You certainly didn’t think that the night I sacrificed you and you told me to pop off elsewhere for comparing you to Anastasia.”

“I was about to die!” She hisses back.

“And now here you are.” Klaus motions around. “And don’t worry. Kol knows you and your precious little mutt are off limits here. As does Rebekah.”

Mauisse doesn’t ask about the third. He looks the type to drink from animals instead, as though he truly hates his existence as a vampire but can’t bring himself to commit suicide. He doesn’t come off as a Ripper like Stefan either.

The young woman steps aside, smiling at them as kindly as she can given the circumstances, “Please, come in.”

Rebekah shoulders her way passed Kol, and her nose scrunches up. “God, Nik, this place reeks of her. How could you?”

Mauisse tenses, and theres something about how she says it that makes her angry but at the same time fearful. She hasn’t had feminine contact since Cami in what feels like weeks. She’s lonely.

Elijah notices, as does the taller brother– she thinks Klaus called him Finn at one point– and both cast a glance at their middle brother and baby sister.

“Come now, Bekah. It was a lot worse before. It smelled of dust and cleaning supplies and rats and other people. Mauisse brightened up the place,” Klaus turns on foot, heading deep into the house.

Mauisse watches them go, Spot trotting up to sit at her feet. She looks down at him, then out the door to the freshly cut yard and rip apple trees. “I guess they’ve got kingdom talk to do,” she sighs. “Let’s go pick some apples, and I’ll try to make Jen’s apple pie. I should still have the recipe scribbled somewhere in my notebook.”

Spot puffs out a tiny bark, and she’s heads into the kitchen to grab a basket. “Hm, I think for one we’d need ten? So let’s make two. I can send that vampire who’s always here to get pie dough later.”

Mauisse walks around with the basket, picking up and inspecting apples. Most aren’t in good condition (bruised, ants, worms, they just aren’t well), so she gets over her fear of heights and uses a ladder at one tree to climb up and pick them. Spot chases butterflies and lays in the sunny spots as this goes on. When she’s gotten enough, Mauisse starts to climb down.

But the basket is too heavy and she needs both arms to carry it and at least one to get down the ladder. Her legs wobble, and she can feel the ladder getting off kilter. Spot raises his head, and whines as his mother steadies herself at the last possible moment. Mauisse breathes heavily, terror running rampant through her veins, her head dizzy.

She rests her forehead agains the bark of the tree, breathing deeply. She shakes at almost being harmed or killed by her stupidity.

“Do you need assistance, Miss Mauisse?”

The young woman jumps, and looks over her shoulder at Finn. She nods. “I need you to take the basket so I can get down.”

“Very well.” He walks over, and she hands down the basket. She gives him a grateful smile as she gets down. “Why are you picking so many of these?”

“I’m gonna make a few pies.” Mauisse tells him, and goes to take it back.

“I will carry it for you. It seems very heavy.”

Another smile is aimed at him, and she calls for Spot. The dog is stubborn, staring at her with big, pleading eyes. Mauisse doesn’t budge and calls his name again with a slightly reprimanding tone all mother’s utilize with deadly accuracy. Spot gets up and trots for her, and follows at her side or just ahead, watching all the flying bugs with beady-eyed interest.

“So, Finn, do you know how to make a pie?” She asks, and he shakes his head. Mauisse debates for a few moments, then asks, “Are you missing anything in Klaus’s family meeting?”

“Honestly, no. I have no interest in whatever he has to do here.”

“Then you’ll help me make the pies.” Mauisse declares. “It’s easy, I think.”

* * *

It is easy. For Mauisse who knows her way around her aunt’s kitchen and has this one set up the exact same way. Finn struggles, and it’s funny to see him get flour on hisself or accidentally cut his finger as he peels apples so he has to stop, clean the knife, and set aside the ruined apple for consumption by one of his siblings. Luckily Mauisse had picked forty apples (deciding midway she’d make three pies, with ten extra for the house).

At some point, she sends her vampire watchdog out to get pie dough. If she had all the ingredients (and the patients to mix and kneed it), Mauisse would have it homemade. Store bought works just as well (so long as he buys the kind she strictly specified).

Eventually, she begins to ask Finn about himself, such as his hobbies, when Klaus daggers him, what he knows so far about modern media, and the like. When it’s revealed he’s been daggered for well over 900 years, Mauisse decides she’ll teach him what she knows of history and set him up with fun history books. She’ll also show him how to drive and what mainstream media is. (“I should warn you that it’s really not like music from 900 years ago, Finn.”)

He’s not scared, and when the watchdog comes back, she shows Finn how to spray the pie pan and how to do the apple glaze and roll out the dough and how long to bake and what to look for as it bakes so it doesn’t burn. He’s a willing learner for being roped it so suddenly, and she’s glad to have him to teach. She’s lonely, stuck here all day and night with no human-ish contract. (Mauisse has started actively talking to her dog, dammit. That isn’t good.)

Mauisse would like to think she’s made a friend, since the one Klaus promised never came.

* * *

“Rebekah was supposed to be who you took to, not Finn,” Klaus reveals as he draws blood from her. She hates needles, more than she does fangs, so Klaus has her look away, stating it makes it easier. It still feels nasty, the alcohol swab running over her brachial artery and needle pushing in, her life slipping out her veins like its nothing. Mauisse feels absolutely drained by the experience when he’s finished taking a pint.

“You lack a female influence, and Rebekah needs someone to teach her about today and the last ninety years. I figured you could help each other.”

“Seeing as she hates me for having Tiata’s and Anastasia’s face, I don’t think that’ll be happening anytime soon. You’d have better luck getting Kol to stop hitting on me. Which,” she looks up at him, pleading, “please do. It’s annoying and makes me extremely uncomfortable.”

“I could no sooner stop Kol than you could the Mississippi by hand.” Klaus raises a hand at her scowl. “Ask Finn to do it. He may look a well restrained vampire, but that is your and Elijah’s doing, as well as 900 years in a coffin.”

“You expect me to believe he was a blood thirty tyrant that put you and Ivan the Terrible and Vladimir Tepes to shame?”

“Yes,” Klaus gives a single nod. Mauisse snorts.

“Good try.” Mauisse rolls her eyes, standing slowly. She takes the glass of orange juice she’d brought, and swallows it all in two gulps. “But try again next time.”

Some time later, Mauisse is showing Finn the workings of the car (an automatic, she has no idea how to drive a stick. Elijah or Klaus would have to teach him that.) and he says, quietly, “Klaus is right, you know. You should be wary of me. I was not always this calm.”

“Yeah, well, hate to break it to you but I’m not scared of what you did in the past, a long, long time ago.” She looks over at him as she turns the car on. “I care about what you do now, in this century. And as far as I can see, you’ve been a pretty swell guy. So stop angsting and get your ass in gear.” She presses a kiss to her pointer and index fingers, then presses them to his cheek. “You’re nice now, and that’s what matters to me, Finn.”

He looks a bit stunned, but he smiles nonetheless at her. It’s a lot warmer than it was the last month they’d known each other. And she hopes she didn’t make a mistake giving him that indirect cheek kiss.

“C'mon,” she coughs awkwardly, “watch what I do with the peddles and gear shift. And listen closely, too. To start off …”

* * *

“Well don’t you just look like the perfect housewife.”

Mauisse lifts her head, stilling the knife she was using the cut into the pie. Rebekah is standing across the counter, holding an apple in her hand. She’s looking over it in fascination.

“Would you like a slice, Rebekah? I’ve got ice-cream in the fridge to go with it.”

“No thank you. You’ve probably baked vervain into it too.”

“I didn’t, unless Finn did and is suddenly immune to it.” Mauisse says dryly, and lifts her slice onto a plate. She moves to grab another plate and places the plates of apple pie in the oven. “I promise you that it’s fine.”

She pulls the vanilla ice-cream from the freezer. As she waits for the pie to warm, placing the wrapped pan back in the fridge, she scoops out four balls of ice-cream into a bowl. When she pulls the pie pieces from the oven, she drops two balls of ice-cream with each slice, one on top and one to the side. She slides one across to Rebekah, eyebrow raised.

“I was once told by my aunt that a beer goes great with apple pie and ice-cream, so long as the ice-cream is vanilla.” Mauisse smiles as Rebekah takes a fork from the drawer nearby and takes a bite. The gleam of Rebekah’s eye says all. Mauisse’s next words ruin it, bringing a scowl back to the blonde vampire’s face, destroying the moment. “I don’t plan to ever know, so Finn confirmed it for me.”

“You Petrovas love getting my brothers wrapped around your finger.” She snarls. “Who’s next, Kol? Because you’ve certainly won over Klaus and Finn. When are you going to screw them?”

Mauisse slowly set down her fork, frowning at the older woman. “Never. I don’t want sex. With anyone. I’m asexual.”

Rebekah rolls her eyes. “Like that’s a thing.”

“It is.” Mauisse frowns. “To be asexual means you have little to no libido, and I’ve never even felt the need to masturbate unless extremely stressed because it releases tension.”

She takes another bite of pie, humming softly. “Klaus is completely aware of my asexuality, and respects it unlike the people who interacted with me in my old town. Two brothers, vampires, were obsessed with me because I have Anastasia’s face, and they didn’t understand I was ace, and that I didn’t want sex and that I wasn’t in love with them. Eventually my friend Charmaine ran them out of town.

"Klaus already explained to me I’ll have to have a child, and it’ll have to come from my body, and I don’t want it or anything that sex and babies and birthing has, but he promised me freedom afterwards. Freedom to go live in some remote town with less than 50 people and write, long as the baby stays with him, with you.” Mauisse goes on. “And I’ll do it. I like it here, I’m happy, but I’m still… Rebekah, I am not here of my own free will, no matter what it looks like. You guys seem to forget that, but I don’t. And yes, I’ve made friends with your brothers, but I don’t want anything romantic with them. I never will.”

Mauisse stands, picking up her plate. She’s at the doorway when Rebekah demands, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the library. I promised to go over the first French Revolution with Finn today.” She replies, turning half-way to look at the Original vampire. “I’ve also lost my appetite, so he may take the rest of my pie.”

Rebekah stands there, ruffled but unsure of how to react. She then takes a savage bite of the pie. “It’s not good, you damn doppelgänger.”

* * *

Mauisse is in a sundress, walking up onto the porch with a basket full of freshly laundered clothes she’d hung to dry instead of using the new washer Klaus had bought. She didn’t have to do laundry, the hybrids under Klaus’s control were more than capable and willing, but she would rather do it herself. She also didn’t have to clean the house, but she did it for the same reason. Most things that the hybrids could do she did instead.

She supposed it came with finding out that the same hybrids Klaus could control, Mauisse could to. If she wanted, she could turn every single one of them against Klaus, and she doubted she’d feel bad despite how nice they’d become toward each other. Living with siblings who literally stabbed each other in the back began to rub off after some time.

Setting the basket on the top porch step, Mauisse sat beside it and began to pull out items. As she folded each item, she set it into specific piles by clothing. Shirts that needed to stay hung up she’d stand to carry over to the banister of the porch.

There is a sharp intake of breath as Mauisse focused on folding a bed sheet. She startles, having been on the plantation alone (with only the hybrids for company) for well over a week. The Original family had fled to fix a problem Mauisse could die from, so they’d had her (read: forced her to) stay.

Not far from where she stands, is Noelle. The hybrid stands by the pyre Klaus had built a month before, looking a bit bedraggled, and tired, dazed and confused, but ecstatic. She takes a step closer, then notices how content Mauisse looks, how well-fed and happy, and hesitates.

“Is it really you?” Noelle asks, and Mauisse hesitates now.

The hybrids inside hang back, ready to attack but commanded by her to not do so unless she said so. Mauisse has full control of the situation, something she isn’t sure she wants.

“Yeah.” The blonde doppelgänger says, and Noelle smiles, eager to come closer. “It’s me. How’d you find me?”

“I followed your scent.” Noelle says. “I didn’t realize it at first, because I’d never been aware of it before. Having been a werewolf before Klaus decided to kill me. But the first time I changed willingly…” Noelle comes closer, and she picks up the bed sheet as she ascends the steps, folding it herself. “All I could smell was you and Klaus, and I followed it. It was hard with all the other scents and the criss-crossing you did.”

Mauisse takes the offered folded sheet, and sets it at her feet. “Why did you do it?”

“To come save you!” Noelle states, then looks her friend up and down, her eyes still on the recently wrapped up needle mark on Mauisse’s arm. “You look happy, considering…”

“I am happy, considering,” Mauisse kneels, and places the folded items back into the basket. “Come on inside with me. The others won’t be back for a while, so it’s just me and the hybrids. And Cami on occasion.”

Noelle doesn’t want to, but she’s spent two years separate from her best friend, and so she follows, asking, “Who’s Cami?”

* * *

Bailey and Stacey introduce themselves on a Wednesday. Klaus and Mauisse had a screaming match when he found out about Noelle that ended in her pushing him to attack her, to fight her, and yelling that he’d already taken away her life by letting Henrik be killed, forcing his mother to kill Tiata and make her a doppelgänger. She hadn’t meant to say it, and she was glad only Finn was present, stepping between her and Klaus. She was as stunned by her words as Klaus was, and she fled right after with a trembling apology.

Mauisse was able to make it into the Garden District before finally breaking down into sobs. She was angry at herself for her words, at Klaus for being such an asshole, at the Original Witch for causing this mess. Mauisse was angry at everything and nothing and eventually she had to cry or she felt like she would explode.

Then she dries her face, fixing what she can of her makeup, and heads into the a park. She didn’t want to see anyone she recognizes, so she came into a completely different section of New Orleans, having been only once before when Klaus took her as he’d promised. With the Quarter now under Klaus’s control, she’s safe to go into the area, but right now she feels it’s a threat to herself and Noelle to be there.

The blonde doppelgänger decides to sit on a bench and soak up the sun into her tanned skin. She used to be pale as the moon, but now she permanently had a slight golden sheen. Mauisse liked to think it’s because she took care of her skin, but it was really her being too lazy to use sunscreen.

“You look pretty sad,” a voice states, and her eyes pop open. She turns to look at a small brunette, in a sweater, skinny jeans, and sneakers. She smiles at Mauisse.

“I’m Stacey.” She greets, turning towards Mauisse. “You’ve got a lot of magic built up in you. Are you a witch, or something else?”

Mauisse stares at Stacey, unsure of how to reply. “I’m a doppelgänger,” she reveals.

“Interesting,” Stacey hums. “Your doppelgänger is famous in the vampire world. She’s a real bitch.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m a vampire. She turned me.” Stacey says this like it’s common knowledge. “She’s a bitch. I hate her.”

“Good. I do too.” Mauisse replies. “Can I ask when she turned you?”

“Ten years ago.” Stacey says sadly. “I’m stuck 17 forever.”

Mauisse winces. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry. My best friend is a witch. She’s been looking for a cure.” Stacey shrugs. “Her name is Bailey.”

“I know witches hate vampires, so she must really love you.” Mauisse smiles gently. “I had a witch friend once. She loved everyone, even vampires, so long as they were nice back.”

“So she must despise Anastasia.”

“Oh yes. Charmaine would have killed her, too, if she didn’t know Klaus had a worse fate in store for her.” Mauisse shakes her head. “I still marvel at how he knows Anastasia from me on instinct.”

“Wait, Klaus?” Stacey sits up. “As in Niklaus, the Original _Hybrid_?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Oh my God. He’s been going savage all over the Quarter this afternoon, his siblings are pretty on edge. All of his hybrids have been looking for someone and Bailey’s been scared to leave her house.” She grasps Mauisse’s hand. “Are you the person he’s after?”

Mauisse wrenches her hand back. “No. I’m not. I just…… I just know him.”

Stacey’s eyes narrowed. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry about this.”

“Wha–”

Pain exploded in the back of Mauisse’s head and everything went dark.

Coming to, she’s in a room. It’s small, shabby. The bed she’s on is comfy and clearly well lived in. She stands, and finds her shoes have been taken off. She walks around the room when she finds the door is locked, trying the single window above the bed and looking through the closet and vanity where there are clearly two sets of clothes for two different women.

Mauisse feels she knows where she is, and a knock before Stacey pokes her head around confirms it. Her eyes are bright on the doppelgänger.

“I’m sorry that we did that!” She says, coming into the room. “But we really need your help, and if any of Klaus’s lackeys saw you, we’d be SOL.”

“You didn’t have to hit me!” She snarls, grabbing the lamp and raising it threateningly.

“Whoa, hold up!” The young vampire raises her hands. “Just because I say 'fight me’ a lot doesn’t mean I mean it literally!”

“Where am I?!”

“Somewhere safe! Bailey is burning sage so no one can hear us, and your cloaking spell on the ring will keep people away for a while yet.” Stacey points out. “And we just need your help. It’s not for much. Please.”

The small brunette looks so desperate, and it reminds Mauisse of two years ago when she looked just the same. The doppelgänger sets down the lamp, sighing quietly.

“What do you need?”

“We need your blood.” A new voice joins, and a slim redhead comes around the door, stepping around Stacey. “I’m Bailey, and your blood is charged with magical properties. The first of which is to make new species. If I can concentrate the magic of a small dose just right, I can reverse it’s effects to make an antidote to vampirism.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Mauisse sits on the edge of the bed. “Something you wouldn’t survive.”

“No, but I haven’t had anyone with such a high potency for magic since Davina Claire visited me.” Bailey replies, sitting beside her. “I don’t need a lot. Just one, maybe two vials. And I’ll need a test subject. That’s all.”

“You’ll die, trying to make it. Klaus wouldn’t let me give my blood to anyone else.”

“Who said Klaus owned your blood, your body, your _soul_?” Bailey asks. “He wasn’t the Devil, last I heard. Just an angry man with too much power.”

“He is an angry man, he does have too much power,” Mauisse agrees, almost gently, as though he’d hear her and be hurt. Then the corners of her mouth hardens as her brow dips and eyes narrow, growling out, “But he doesn’t own me. Klaus thinks he does, but he never will. I could slit my throat and he’d be unable to stop it, because his precious hybrids also listen to me, a lot more than they do him.”

“Then prove it,” says Bailey just as harshly. “Prove he doesn’t own you, that you aren’t his bitch, take away what power he has. Imagine, an antidote to vampirism. All those hybrids, once again werewolves able to attack Klaus if you also turned him human. Imagine, the Original family all human and at your mercy, relying on you for everything.”

 _It does sound nice_ , Mauisse muses to herself. “How am I giving my blood to you?”

Bailey smiles as Stacey heaves a heavy breath of relief.

Stacey leaves her in the Garden District, removing the blindfold and hugging her with a quiet scream of happiness. Then Stacey is gone and Mauisse is left with a sore thigh, where Bailey took three vials of blood. (“Take three. In case you mess up.” “Are you sure?” “With my life.”)

Mauisse thinks vaguely of how shitty her doing this is, how much she wants to see them, especially Elijah and Rebekah, at her feet, powerless against her and the werewolves who’d tear them apart at her asking. Because yes, she had Anastasia’s face, and Tiata’s before that, but Mauisse was different. She could play the Devil’s fiddle and keep most of her soul to save others, she could tangle with Satan himself and win her freedom, she could stab him and his lords and lady in the back and feel zero remorse after two years of calling them friend and family.

They tore her away from her family because they were stupid 1,000 years ago. Mauisse was going to get her revenge.

Klaus finds her himself in wolf form, and he looks absolutely rabid. Mauisse isn’t afraid of him, not anymore, and eventually he stops growling, and his ears lay flat as a whine escapes. Something tickles at her heart, some form of guilt or remorse, and her eyes finally water again.

The anger she feels dissipates and while she still wants to see the people who ruined her life broken at her feet, in that one moment she doesn’t. She shifts down the bench to let him up, and wolf Klaus lays a head in her lap. She rests a hand on top of his head, and dozes in the warm sun.

* * *

“You have your freedom.”

Mauisse jumps, looking up at Klaus. She’s bent over a book, reading up on ancient Irish gods and goddesses after learning from Stacey that Bailey belongs to the Druid class of magic, pulling her knowledge of the earth from deeply embedded family lines tracing far back into the English and Irish histories.

“What?”

“You don’t need to stay any longer,” Klaus explains, and Mauisse blinks. “You can go wherever you please. I’ll provide the money and transportation to begin again. I won’t track you down.”

“What do you mean? What about your hybrids?”

Bailey’s antidote works, but Stacey is waiting. She wants to make sure Mauisse gets her happy ending first. Mauisse had Bella, a werewolf whom Klaus thought he’d turned with Mauisse’s help but had not, lace the wine everyone usually had at dinner with the antidote. Tonight she’d get her revenge, even as her stomach bubbled constantly with unease since Bailey found her and gave her a vial of the anti-vampirism (Noelle had decided to wait too, watching her friend with a look of sadness as she poured the blood down Bella’s throat).

“I think I’ve made enough to last 500 hundred years.” Klaus replies. “And maybe until the end of time. You only have a short time on this planet.”

Mauisse feels her fingers trembling suddenly, something blooming in her chest that hurts. She hates Klaus.Or, thinks she does anyway. Spot whines at her feet, sensing his mother’s internal distress. Klaus does too, appearing alarmed.

Setting aside the book, like so long ago in that car, Mauisse stands. She takes Klaus’s right hand, lifting it up to look at his palm. His life line is short, scarily so, and knows it ended 1,000 years ago when his father killed him and his siblings. Her eyes flicker to her own, shorter than his, and shakes her curly head of hair.

“Klaus, I think…” The need for revenge falls away, and all the hybrids that push at her mind with their rage and pain fall away too. She’s surprised to find that she’s very fond of the asshole before her, the kind of fond she saves for Noelle and Charmaine . Her eyes pick up, staring into his stormy eyes. “I think I’ll stay. I like it here. With you guys.”

Klaus does not ask at dinner how the bottle of very expensive, very rare wine usually used at dinner is suddenly empty, left out drying in the sun the next morning. He does ask if anyone would like the 1783 Merlot and Mauisse agrees heartily, cheeks flushed from the last dregs of a wine bottle.

Bella looks particularly upset at the sight of the bottle, but Klaus doesn’t dwell on that either.

* * *

“I will not kill them!” Mauisse stands in the center of a gathering, up on a small hill so she can see all the hybrids surrounding her. “And I won’t let you kill them!”

“You may command us now, doppelgänger,” a thick accent speaks up, “but you will not stop us if we break your control too.”

“You don’t even know how to.” Mauisse faces him, hissing. “You aren’t welcome here, Taylor.”

“Seems I’ve been missing out on all the fun.”

Mauisse’s head snaps around, staring with wide-eyes at Kol. He stands there, casually playing with a thin stick the length of his arm. “Little mouse, why ever did you not invite me to these midnight soirées of yours? They look positively fun.”

“Kol, what are you doing?”

“I was simply wondering why that wine you hated but the rest of us liked smelled faintly of your blood and then was gone the next day last week.” He motions around with the stick he holds casually in hand. “And then look, that little kitten of yours– Noelle was it?– is sneaking you out the house for a rendezvous with the help.” His amiable visage plummets. “Now what’s all this about killing my family? And if you don’t start talking, I’ll start _ripping_.”

Mauisse knew there was a reason she didn’t like Kol. Here’s example A: He’s crazy as hell.

“We found a way to kill you, using white oak ash mixed with her blood.” A hybrid speaks up, one who hates Klaus but likes not having to change and doesn’t want to take the antidote once Bailey makes a mass portion of it.

Kol snorts, and the hybrid crumbles to the ground as his head is taken clean off by the stick. Mauisse screams, and Noelle grabs her friend, pulling her back from the top of the hill. There is a shuffling of unrest, of anger and pain. Mauisse hides her face in Noelle’s shoulder.

“Now, let’s try again. This time from the mouse herself.” Kol raises a brow at Mauisse. She trembles as she straightens from Noelle’s grasp, taking a deep, steadying breath.

“Where’s the angry mouse the others admire so much? The one that wants to see us all dead?” Kol demands causally, and she takes a step closer so the hybrids are farther behind her. She may not be a fan of them all, but she’s come to know and care for them. “I’d like to talk with her.”

“Too damn bad,” Mauisse spits. “I just had a fucking epiphany you arrived late to.”

“I believe the modern term is bullshit.” Kol does come closer, and he circles her like a predator. She stands her ground, glaring all the while. “You realizing you liking my family is nothing new. We’ve been watching you struggle with it since we woke up. You’re just late on the uptake, little mouse.”

The stick is pressed under her chin. “Klaus isn’t taking blood from you anymore, so I can kill you. It’d be worth the dagger in the heart, I assure you. Tell me what you were aiming to give us.”

“A cure.” Mauisse hisses sharply. “A cure to vampirism. And it works. Bella stayed a werewolf.”

“One person surviving doesn’t change anything. That bitch is a werewolf. There’s a difference.”

“Then take it yourself,” Noelle growls. “And get off my best friend. A witch certainly will survive, won’t they?”

Kol’s eyes got foggy with memories, then he presses the stick in harder to Mauisse’s throat. She’s having trouble breathing.

“How do I get this 'cure’?”

* * *

Kol is human now. Klaus is aware of the cure and the fact nearly all of his hybrids would rather suffer the monthly change than stay his. Rebekah is angry and hates Mauisse again (though the doppelgänger doubts Rebekah had felt been anything but that). Elijah looks wounded and can’t look her in the eyes anymore, which Mauisse feels strangely sad about. Only Finn talks to her, and it’s short answers, and he seems to have to take deep breaths when he has to look at her too long.

Mauisse pretends it doesn’t get to her, but it’s hard to deal with when she’s relied on these people for going on three years now. So she tends to go and see Cami, bringing Bella with. Sometimes Bailey and Stacey (not yet ready to change) stop by, and the women talk. A young blonde woman stops by now and again, dropping off liquor from her daddy’s store for the bar. A couple times she spent the night in the car or at Bailey’s and Stacey’s one room home, a blanket wrapped tight around her due to suddenly feeling nothing but cold.

They assure it’ll pass (Stacey isn’t surprised Mauisse didn’t do it. Mauisse is angry, not vengeful. Bailey isn’t either, though disappointed she wasn’t able to see the bastard burn), and Mauisse hopes so. She hates not being able to talk to any of them, even Finn despite him still talking to her feels like there’s no talking, and wants it to end.

She comes in late one night, holding Spot in her arms like a baby as he sleeps against her chest. Kol is passed out in the kitchenette, grimoires around him. Mauisse stares at him, long and hard, then takes a blanket from the hall closet and manages to lay it across him with one hand. For another few moments she stares, then pats his back gently, and heads up to bed.

Kol cracks open an eye as her bedroom door shuts, frown spreading over his lips.

The next morning, Mauisse comes down the stairs. Kol is sitting where she usually sits in the kitchen, and she doesn’t take offense. Just grabs a bowl to fill with Fruity Pebbles and milk and slinks to the other side of the kitchen to eat alone. Spot comes down soon after, and she fills his food bowl.

“It’s strange being human again.” Kol says.

The whole house seemed to still. Even Spot lifted his head to look at Kol. Mauisse is staring at him.

“I sometimes forget to eat, or that I no longer have super strength and can no longer stay awake for days at a time.”

“Okay.” Mauisse says, unsure of what else can be say.

“Could you teach me how to be human again?” Kol requests, receiving a blank stare from the young doppelgänger. “You are the only vaguely human person in the house next to the Bella woman, but she isn’t very… fond of me.”

Mauisse snorts into her Fruity Pebbles. Did he expect her to? Thanks to him, the plan she and Mauisse had created to calmly turn all the hybrids and then send them running for the hills was fucked over with a ten foot saguaro cactus. The asshole ruined everything. Not to mention he got Mauisse ostracized in the house she lives in, to where she’ll frequently lodge elsewhere in places not necessarily safe (she doubts the others care).

“You’re not fond of me either, and I understand why.” Kol goes on. “I ruined what happiness you had, and as you were finally accepting my family as your own.”

“Yes, so you can guess why I don’t want to talk to nor help you.” She replies quite icily, placing her spoon in her cereal. “I was going to have all the hybrids changed and tell them to leave, and never look back or I’d willingly help Klaus turn them again. Then your ass waltzed in, fucking it up. You did ruin everything, because I was ready to be hated for taking away Klaus’s army but not for turning his brother. I didn’t want to turn you, or take you from him. I wanted to give people the freedom they had stolen from them like I did the moment I stepped into Mystic Falls.”

Mauisse stands, taking her bowl with. Kol watches her for a moment before he calls after, “Where are you going?”

“Where I don’t have to see you,” she replies, and the backdoor opens and shuts with a bang. The house doesn’t have any noise for the next two days, and Mauisse doesn’t return for three of them. The Originals, her having never been gone for more than one (always returning in the middle of the night or in the early morning), are put on edge rather quickly by the sudden change in schedule.

When she comes walking in, hair once again short and curly, hair the same ash it’s been for a year, they relax. Klaus feels his ire at her disappearance ease, Elijah stops pacing his room, Finn no longer feels the urge to tear into a throat, and Rebekah feels motivated to antagonize someone again. Behind her comes Cami, Marcel, Noelle, and Bella with folded boxes, and the Originals freeze again.

“What are those for?” Kol is the one to ask, surprised by her disappearance but not her return with a new look. “And why are they here?

"Klaus said I was free to leave.” Mauisse replies casually. “So I’ve finally decided to leave. I’ll be packing my things with some help, and I’ll be staying with someone else until I can save up enough money to move back to Florida.”

“You most certainly will not!” Klaus snarls, standing. Panic is barely concealed in his eyes, scared to lose another family member. He reaches to grab her arm, and she wrenches it back as Marcel and Noelle move to block him. “You lost that right when you went against our family!”

“Last I checked, I wasn’t apart of your family.” Mauisse growls, throwing the words Klaus had used when Kol came back to the plantation human and revealed how and her connection to it back in his face. Her voice doesn’t tremble when she speaks, likely because Cami has a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I’m just a two-bit whore with a bitch’s face, who was meant to be a blood bag. I don’t matter to any you.”

She takes the boxes in Bella’s hands and climbs up the stairs.

“If you take one more step up those stairs, you are never allowed back in this house or the Quarter.”

Mauisse stops, and looks down the banister at him. Spot stares through the bars at the hybrid with a pleading gleam. His owner’s eyes flash with defiance. “Good. I ain’t staying in the Quarter.” And she finishes her walk, making sure to step extra loud.

“Then you are not allowed in New Orleans at all!” Klaus yells, but Mauisse isn’t deterred. She hasn’t been scared of him in a long time. He’d have to attack her to make her scared, and even then she’d likely just punch him and scream at him.

Even then, she wouldn’t stop caring about him and how much it hurts they’ve all rejected her.

* * *

Mauisse knows Klaus’s declaration that she couldn’t be in New Orleans held no water, just that she couldn’t be in the Quarter. So her friends and her had packed up the room that was titled Her’s for the past three years, and Marcel had gladly helped her drive them all out of the city and into the Bayou where Bella’s home was. Bella owned a one room house, and it was small but nice. There was a pallet on the floor for Mauisse, layered with blankets from Mauisse’s room at the plantation from it being cold at night.

Shoving her boxes into the corner she’d claimed as hers, she leaves out her duffle bag, opened to pull out fresh clothes. Bella informed her that she didn’t own a washer or dryer so cleaning clothes was done in the city (or by hand), and that she wasn’t the best at cooking anything other than canned soup and mac 'n’ cheese. Mauisse wasn’t hindered, stating she could cook and bake fairly well, waving around her notebook full of her aunt’s recipes and her own tweaked versions. They’d already worked out the deal that Mauisse would provide groceries one week and Bella the next, and thanks to Marcel’s nifty ability to compel the now homeless Mauisse had a job to do so. She also would be able to save up money, since neither had to pay for the house or a car.

The doppelgänger sits down on her pallet as Spot curls next to her, and smiles at Bella who is running a brush through her thick, messy hair. She thinks of Rebekah’s, how it had the same chestnut shine that her friend’s does when the light strikes it, and promptly bursts into tears.

Bella sits beside her friend, a hand on the slightly older woman’s shoulder, and let’s her cry.

* * *

Klaus comes for her a month later.

The doppelgänger feels it by the dread pooled in her stomach, by the sickly-sweet taste in her throat and the way her palms get clammy. But it passes soon and goes to the back of her mind. Whatever it is obviously doesn’t concern her too much, though she stays a bit jumpy. A bit more mouse-y than usual.

She is cleaning up after a family from North Dakota, flashing a pretty waitress smile as they leave and she picks up her tip. It’s a good tip, and she was prompt with the family of five. She turns to head back into the kitchens when the bell above the door rings. All the waitresses call out, “Good morning!”

Mauisse sets her plates down by the sink and blows a kiss at the washer boy, Ansen, before heading back out. Larissa is grinning when she comes back out, looking close to bursting with excitement.

“What’s got you so hyper?” Mauisse asks, and the brunette gives a small jump.

“You’ve got a really hot guy in one of your booths!” She points at him, but Mauisse can’t see over the head of the other patrons. Neither can Larissa, being barely two inches taller than her, but it doesn’t stop the bubbly, funny brunette woman.

“Okay. I don’t see why that matters.” Mauisse shrugs. “I’ve still got a table to clean.”

“I’ve got it!” Larissa grabs a rag and bottle of sanitizer. “Go get yourself a date! You seem so lonely!”

“I’m not lonely, Larissa. I’m perfectly happy alone.”

“You need to find yourself a cuddle-buddy, now go!” Larissa is an asexual like Mauisse, and luckily found a partner in Ansen. Mauisse was okay to live alone, but Larissa knew better, as did Bella and their friends. She craved affection, and had lost her source of it when she was ostracized in the house she’d lived in, so she left and now seemed to be drowning in loneliness. It wasn’t healthy with how she rejected everyone who tried to get close to her.

“Lari– oh, fine!” She huffs, grabbing a passing waitress’s menu, tucking her pen back behind her ear. Rolling her shoulders back, sliding on a charming smile, she walks up. Her accent goes on thick, well into the Southern drawl she had when raised in the country parts of Florida. Keeping a good distance as she leans in close, Mauisse sets down the menu, snatching a passing roll of silverware to place next to it. Mauisse is yet to look up, focused on setting up the table and pulling out her pad. “Hello! Welcome to Merlotte’s, my name’s Mauisse an’ll be your server, would you like to start off with an appetizer or drink, dear?”

“You certainly take to serving well.”

The familiar accent makes her skin crawl, goosebumps rising along her arms and legs. Her bright hazel eyes lift to hold Klaus’s amused, if somewhat tired, blues. A smirk tugs at his lips, her skin draining white.

“Hello, Klaus.” Mauisse nods, her perky attitude suddenly falling flat. Her lips, painted scarlet from a lipstick Marcel had given her last week, pressed flat. “What are you doin’ here out in Bon Temps?”

“Looking for my… _sister_.” The way he said the word made it seem like it should be longer, with more emphasis on different vowels. Her fingers clinched her pad tighter.

“You told me to never come back, that I wasn’t allowed in New Orleans.” Mauisse replies. “So I didn’t. I’ve got a job here an’m quite happy.”

“Yes, living in a small one room house on the bayou and walking an hour to and from work everyday sounds lovely.” Klaus sneers.

“People have had less and been just as happy,” she hisses. She clears her throat as Kelsey walks by, flashing her friend a concerned look, making the paler skinned woman smiles reassuringly. “Now what would you like? I do have other customers, Klaus.”

“Your best scotch, and you to come back to New Orleans.”

Mauisse blanches. Then she scowls. “I’ll be right back with your scotch, sir, but I’m afraid I can’t go with you no where. We ain’t that kind of service.”

She heads into the back, ripping off her apron to throw into the corner and pulling her bandana out her back pocket to hold back her curls. Lafayette, the cook, asks what’s wrong but she keeps walking. “Take the man at my table a scotch, I’m heading home. Family emergency.”

Lashon, the bartender, rushes to stop Mauisse. “What’s going on? What did he do? You were fine until you talked to him. Does Ansen need to throw him out?”

“No, it’s fine.” Mauisse pulls away. “He’s my… he’s my brother and he ain’t happy that I’ve not been talkin’ to him, is all. And I don’t wanna stay.”

“He the one that told you to get out and stay out?” Ansen dries off his hands, coming up to them. There’s tension along his shoulders and arms, reminding her of when Rebekah or her would be hurt and Klaus or Elijah or Finn would come to their defense. “Because I can tell him just the same if he ain’t gonna listen to ya, Ma. We don’t like no disrespectful people up in these parts, especially men. They ain’t got no air to blow.”

“No, it’s fine.” Mauisse says pleadingly. “I just need to go. Now.”

“Take her on home, Lashon,” Ansen says after a moment. “If Sam asks, I’ll cover for ya.”

“Thank you,” Mauisse breaths as Lashon and her quickly head out the back.

She’s aware Klaus heard the entire thing. Couldn’t live with him for three years and not know it. But that was the point. Mauisse is pissed, but she won’t bring civilians into it. All of these people here are human, even Sam with his locked werewolf gene that she won’t force him to unlock. She cares about these people as much as they care for her. So she’s taking the talk– more like a fight– elsewhere, where no one is gonna get hurt except for herself.

The drive is about a quarter of an hour thanks to the car, and she has Lashon leave as fast as possible. The faster she gets the nice human to leave, the better. Spot isn’t scratching at the door like usual, which is strange, but she doesn’t question it. Klaus pulls up a few minutes later, and he exits the car slowly. Mauisse stands patiently on the porch of the tiny house, hand resting languidly on the worn banister of colorless, peeling wood.

A strange look passes over Klaus’s face, and he takes a deep breath unlike when back at the bar. It’s like he’s scenting the air, the earth. He wants to ask a question, clearly, but she doesn’t let him.

“Go away, Klaus.” She tells him sharply. “You told me to leave, and not come back, so I did. Let me be.”

He comes closer, and she refuses to step away. Mauisse won’t be scared of him. Mainly because she isn’t, it also because it would show weakness if she was.

“Mauisse…” He clearly wants to argue the point, but something passes over his eyes, and his gaze, intently trained on her, moves to the door. “When was Spot last fed?”

“Before I left for work three hours ago.” Mauisse promptly replies, confused as to why he’s focused on her dog, on her little fluffy son, and not his need to argue the case on her returning. He moves for the door, and something else blooms in her chest. The dread she’d thought culminated into his arrival returns, leaving a sickly-sweet, coppery taste in her mouth once more. “Klaus?”

He opens the screen door, then the wooden one. His nose wrinkles, his eyes glancing back at her briefly. She follows him.

Spot is curled up on Mauisse’s pillow, sleeping. His food is half eaten, as usual, and his water is barely touched. She doesn’t find anything alarming about it. But he doesn’t lift his head to look at her, or get excited at her return or company. Just… lays there.

“Spot?” She whispers gently, like she always has since coming to Louisiana and the dog barely leaving her side. Like she did before when they were in the same room and she wanted his attention. The back of her eyes begin to sting at the lack of response, worry welling up in her. Her voice gets louder, feeling panic rise. “Spot?”

The dog takes a shallow, shuddering breath and lifts a tired head to look at her. Mauisse matches the breath, moving past Klaus. She picks up Spot, cradling him to her as a newborn as she has since a toddler, barely older than four when he came into her life as a newborn pup. The dog’s eyes are glassy, tired and clearly struggling to stay awake.

“Spot, what’s wrong?” She murmurs, rocking her baby gently. The dog turns his head, nuzzling her chest with a quiet bark, barely a puff of breath. “Baby? Spot-bot? Spotty? What’s wrong?”

She’s crying, barely able to feel his weak heartbeat. Mauisse realizes belatedly that what Klaus was smelling was death. Bella had been looking uneasy the last week when she came in after her change, being extra careful around Spot since then. And now here she was, the last to know.

“Spot, baby, please don’t do this.” She whispers, falling to her knees and holding him close, letting him nuzzle into her neck. “My little mogwai, my little Gizmo, stay. Stay with me. Please. We promised to stay together until you turned 20, and were so, so old. You’ve got two more years, baby. Please.”

She’s babbling now, begging him to breath better, to bark and wiggle and run around, and Spot licks her cheek, so she kisses his back and he doesn’t turn away like usual. The dog goes cold in her arms eventually, heart stopped, and she curls around him, bursting into loud, body shaking sobs.

Klaus just stands there as she breaks down, screaming and crying and begging Spot not to leave her, to come back and stop playing dead because she never taught him it. She rocks with the small dog held to her in a vice grip, kissing it’s forehead and smoothing over stiffening fur, unable to stop.

A hand lowers to her shoulder and she wrenches away. She falls back, shoulder connecting with the kitchen table, and she screams at Klaus to not touch her. The hybrid wrenches back in shock, not expecting such a reaction. She presses back into the table, a frightened, mourning animal.

Her breath stuttered in her chest, biting down on her lip in an attempt to stop the sobs. But they keep coming and she keeps rocking, whispering her pet’s name. She struggles to breath for a moment, gasping on a sob-scream mixture, and all she can force out is a pained keening noise.

“We promised,” she rasps now, and Klaus tries again to touch her, “we promised to be together forever. We promised.”

“Not everything lasts forever, Mauisse,” Klaus says quietly, and she wrenches her shoulder away when he speaks. “All things end.”

Her chest expands with a forced inhale, quaking with the expansion of it. She quivers, eyes watering again after the brief stop of tears. Her breath comes out warbled, cracking halfway through.

“He was my _baby_.”

Her tears fall again, and this time when Klaus touches her elbow, she turns into him, bursting into sobs again. He wraps an arm around her, allowing her to become a weak, boneless mess against him. Klaus presses his lips to the crown of her head, then tilts his head so his cheek presses against her soft hair.

They sit that way for several hours.

* * *

Mauisse doesn’t come back willingly. Actually, she likely wouldn’t have put up a fight so describing how she came back didn’t matter. It was strange how the life seemed to drain out of her when Spot died. Klaus couldn’t get her to let go of the corpse, so he’d had no choice but to bring her back to the house carrying a dead dog. A dead dog she smoothed the fur of and nuzzled against, tears a constant.

Rebekah wrinkles her nose in distaste and Mauisse bares her teeth in a challenge. Then she turns her attention back to the dog.

“Lovely, Nik. You brought her back feral.” She sneers, and walks back inside with clear disgust and a minor hint at being disturbed.

Finn stands as a safe distance, unsure of how to approach a mourning Mauisse. Elijah stands by him, watching how Klaus is careful to not touch her more than necessary lest she lash out. And lashing out didn’t imply yelling at or trying to hit, she aimed to bite and scratch, to maim. She wasn’t being allowed to mourn in peaceful quiet so she was acting out until left alone.

Klaus is able to corral her upstairs, into her barren, old room. She sits on the bed cross-legged. She takes the blanket she had brought, a baby blanket depicting a child version of Noah’s Arc and reeks of her and the dog, and lays it across the bed. She chokes on tears, sobs quiet now, and wraps the corpse as though the blanket were a shroud. She cradles the wrapped dog, knees pulling up to her chest and chin dropped low to protect it.

She falls asleep like that, pain etched into her face with tears.

A few hours later, a hybrid knocks on the door of her bedroom. He’s very careful, the scent of death and tears thick in the air. He wonders if she knows that all the hybrids, even Taylor, are fretting over her wellbeing and have been since her return just hours previous. They didn’t need to worry when she left, knowing she was safer, but when returned in such a feral, depressed state, they knew something had happened to their proverbial mother.

“Mauisse?” The hybrid, named Malcom, calls. “Are you awake?”

Her head raises slowly, groggily. She stares at Malcolm with sleepy eyes. The sound to escape Mauisse’s throat was rougher than usual, “Yes.”

“I’ve brought a few fruits.” He nudges the door open cautiously. In his arms are various fruits she’s known to eat, all cut up on a tray with little cups of chocolate, caramel, and cream. His eyes flicker to the wrapped corpse that anyone with heightened senses could already smell. It’s probably settling into rigor mortis. “You might like the chocolate. It’s good for sadness.”

Her eyes watch him move, not tensed like she is with everyone else. He sets the tray at the foot of the bed, and backs up to the door.

“I’m so sorry, Mauisse.” His eyes flicker to the wrapped corpse, then back to her eyes. “We all loved him very much.”

Her eyes water, clutching the corpse to her breast again. She smiles tremulously. “Thank you, Malcolm. You can go on back home, okay?”

“Of course.” He smiles back, it gentle. “And remember what I taught you, girl.”

She giggles wetly. “Noelle and the others is my pautna an’ them.”

He grins at her, closing the door gently after him.

She does eat some of the green apple slices, dipping them in caramel, and a couple strawberries after slathering them in chocolate. The rest, like the oranges and red apples slices, are left alone, pushed around the tray. A couple times, she has to take a few minutes to remember she has to breath, heart faltering in her chest.

Mauisse wishes she’d go to sleep and never wake up, wishing she had someone to lean against and cry into like when Klaus was there. She couldn’t hold it together forever.

There is another knock, it much more sure. And the door opens to reveal Elijah. Mauisse doesn’t bristle at him, simply stares with a detached quiet. She’s still livid at the Original family, might always be. Yes, she did wrong by going so far to try and turn them human, but her induced rage, placed there by the angry hybrids, was broken before things turned bad. They’re the ones who ran her off, who ignored her and completely withdrew, and nothing she did made them change their minds until she’d left. Mauisse was only there because she was too distraught to argue and fight back.

“He’s starting to decompose, Mauisse.” Elijah says gently, not coming over the threshold. She might attack him and he didn’t want the wrath of a mourning woman or his siblings on his head. “He must be buried.”

“No!” She flinches at how loud her voice is, she takes a shuddering breath. “No. As a kid, I always said, I always said….” She’s starting to pant, like she can’t breath. She’s starting to shake, clutching Spot to her and trying so hard to hold in her grief, to push it back like she had to when her parents died. There are black spots, she can’t hear Elijah calling her name, or see him enter her room, doesn’t feel the bed dip or him wrap an arm around her.

“Mauisse, it’s alright.” He smooths down her hair, pressing his lips to her hair. “You can do this. Just breath. You must breath.”

She struggles to breath, and he takes a deep, deep breath. Mauisse follows suit, exhaling as he does. He continues to rhythmically breath so she doesn’t pass out or go further into a panic attack.

Elijah pulls back, hooking a few strands or particularly curl hair behind her ears. He holds her face tenderly, dipping his head to look in her eyes. “What did you say as a child?”

“Cremation.” Mauisse breaths, struggling to keep back her tears. He doesn’t want her to. Bottling up emotions was detrimental to one’s health. “I wanted him to stay with me, and if he’s buried or a, a fucking _statue_ then he can’t. He can’t go with me to see the world, all of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower or stand at Ellis Island where my great-grandmother came into America, or walk the Great Wall or all the things I talked about as a kid. Elijah,” she leans into him, finally listening to his murmurs that it was okay to cry, hoarse voice utterly broken, heart fluttering, “why did he die? Why? He was supposed to be with me always. To live after I’d died, not die now.”

She hides her face in his shirt, and he doesn’t care for his shirt being ruined. He holds her.

* * *

Mauisse changes into a white dress that she owns but has never used. She does her makeup using waterproof everything, and hisses at anyone who tries to carry the body for her. She can do it herself.

Then she marches to the car barefoot, sitting in the front seat across from Klaus. She doesn’t dare unwrap the body, all the windows rolled down. Mauisse won’t wear shoes into anywhere, and anyone who argues with her will get one hell of an argument (and probably a territorial hybrid angry at them).

They arrive at the animal hospital forty minutes later, and she requests to have Spot cremated on his own. She pulls a billfold of money from somewhere on her person before any of the others can (and they wonder when she got the money when she has/had a waitress job), and she stares the woman behind the counter down. It takes a few moments before she gives in.

“I want it done now.” She adds calmly, and the woman blanches. “I’ll add another hundred if you do.”

The woman says she’ll be right back.

(“Wherever did you get the money?” “My dad’s 401K. I’m technically his only kid. I keep it stashed in banks and some on my person at all times. I just don’t use it except in emergencies.” “Going back to Florida isn’t an emergency?” “No, but Spot’s death is.” “You are quite the strange one.”)

Mauisse orders a locket, and has a recent photo to be made small and placed in side. The woman says the locket, shaped like a heart, would have to be ordered because they’re out.

“How long would it take?” She asks.

“Two weeks at least.” The woman replies, and Mauisse shakes her head. Anxious upon noticing how agitated Klaus looked, the woman added, “We have others in, if you’d like to look?”

“Yes, please.”

Mauisse takes the proffered book, then stands there, flipping through. She peruses the selections slowly, and Elijah decides to take Rebekah and Kol out shopping when the two turn antsy. Finn and Klaus stay behind, waiting for Mauisse to start crying again.

The locket she chooses is a butterfly, it bringing up memories of when Spot ran around out in the grass, chasing butterflies and bees and flies. She does have to take a moment before talking, voice stern when she speaks. Luckily, they do have the butterfly, and she pays for it immediately.

They wait a few hours, and when the woman comes out with a small black box with a wrapped package inside, the necklace on top, Mauisse thanks her quietly. She cradles the box, the gentlest she’s looked since Spot’s death, looking lost and sad and close to tears again. Klaus puts a hand on her shoulder, very light with it.

“Would you like to go out to eat, sister?” He asks.

“No,” she shakes her head. “I… I want to go get my things from the Bayou. Spot liked it here more than he did there, despite all the nice people.”

“Alright.” He plucks up the necklace and she starts to growl, tensed, but he merely clasps the lengthy chain around her neck. He tells himself to go buy a nice silver chain so when the metal beads rust, she’ll have a back-up. Mauisse stares at him like he’s an alien from his acts of kindness. “Then let’s go.”

* * *

The packing is quick due to very little being out, so Mauisse takes her time. She can’t smell it, but it reeks of death to her. There are many good memories but the one bad now overshadows it. She couldn’t stay even if Klaus hadn’t come when he had. The death of the one person she loved without condition, and who loved her back just as fiercely, is gone, leaving a gapping whole in her chest. It’s like someone has carved out her heart and put a lead piece back in its place, and it’s slowly killing her. She can only breathe when her mind is utterly attuned to something else, otherwise she feels herself sinking to the bottom of the Mississippi for gators to have their way with her flesh and blood and bone.

Amazingly, it’s Rebekah who is able go keep her afloat. Once upon a time, Charmaine would have been that person. But moving cut such ties, and despite the distrust the paler blonde always had for the darker blonde doppelgänger, she comes out onto the porch when Mauisse is suffocating, drawing her inside for a game of Uno with Kol or begging Mauisse when she’s sat, staring blankly into her mind, to let Rebekah read some of her writings so the younger girl becomes antsy and nervous, focused on the written word and not her ruined family.

And eventually Mauisse does not need to be sought out, found writing like she hadn’t done in weeks (months, really), or tracking Rebekah down to go into the city and shop, eat, and play. The two become closer, a bond forming between them, a bond the male Mikaelsons have a right to fear. When at odds, they couldn’t accomplish much (nothing ever got done, really), but Mauisse’s tendencies to mother yet be strict and Rebekah’s need to break away and have fun meld together to coexist, and Rebekah becomes apart of Mauisse’s friend group. They become a reckoning force, these women, and it seems Mauisse and Rebekah lead them.

Elijah muses, as he watches his sisters do their makeup and chatter on about something or other, that he once heard a joke.

A group of women– a doppelgänger, Original vampire, baby vampire, witch, werewolf, hybrid, bartender, and human– walk into a bar. And they take over the world. He doesn’t mind the joke, because it wasn’t much of one. It was the future.

Mauisse wasn’t ever going to get over Spot, but she’d likely use it as fuel to keep going. Her warming eyes and carefree nature certainly said so. Sometimes she would relapse and need to be told to breath, that the world would still turn and float with her, and at other moments she would become quiet with her thoughts and they knew not to push her. Who they were, Elijah wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe the world was “they” and this new family was “them.”

He liked the idea.

* * *

Rebekah doesn’t feel like going out one evening, a couple years after Spot’s death. Mauisse is 26, and she is happy with where she has gotten in life. The necklace has never left her neck, the shiny silver chain keeping away all who dare come close and are not of safe standing.

Most of Klaus’s hybrids stayed hybrid, and Stacey is planning to taking the last of the antidote on her birthday in the coming weeks. Everything is going well.

“Bek, I’ll be back by about ten!” Mauisse calls to the house. Rebekah already knew that, but the rest weren’t aware. Malcolm hovered at the door, worried. It was a full moon, and the hybrid knew it wasn’t until the moon hit its apex that werewolves changed, but something worried at him about tonight.

“Be careful, Mauisse.” He says, and goes off into the house.

Mauisse doesn’t think much of it, bidding Malcolm to have a good night and to go back home to his wife. He smiles tentatively and promises to do so.

Then she slides on her jacket and heads out, keys in hand. She takes the stairs two at a time barefoot, her heels hanging from her other hand. Klaus’s car is in the driveway that evening, so she stops to flip to the right key, and gets in. Before he can get to the door to tell her she no way in hell was allowed to drive his car, she’s speeding up the driveway.

The Quarter is alive with a funeral parade, music playing loud through the streets as pink and purple flushed twilight warms cheeks and haunts shadows. It’ll be a long march to Lafayette, and she wishes to join, but it’s not her place at the moment. She’s meeting with Hayley and Bella before Bella has to run off for the night (Bailey had made a potion much like the one from _Harry Potter_ , but Bella didn’t have control for the first thirty or so minutes).

She parks the car and exits, walking the block to Rouseau’s. She’s a couple minutes early, so asks Cami to put all the drinks on her tab before ordering a screwdriver, with extra orange juice. Cami rolls her eyes, and asks how Mauisse is getting herself home if she’s drunk and came alone.

“This is the only drink I’m having and its only six. I’m leaving at nine-thirty. If you’d like, you could drive me home.” The doppelgänger smirks. “Klaus would certainly love to see you.”

Cami’s cheeks turn scarlet. She agrees to drive Mauisse home.

Bella and Hayley come through the doors, laughing about something.

The four talk and talk and maybe a buzzed Mauisse talks Hayley and Bailey into doing karaoke. They go a few rounds, single, as a duo, and as a trio. A few times they start laughing too hard and have to sit. Cami is recording it all, and sending a few videos to Klaus.

Cami cuts Mauisse off after three drinks (a screwdriver and two glasses of red wine), and the younger takes it in stride. The other two don’t mind, nursing their drink and asking for another when it gets low.

Soon, the clock hits nine-fifteen, and Bella whines. She doesn’t want to leave. Neither does Hayley and Mauisse. But they must because of conflicting schedules.

“I’ll talk to you guys later!” Mauisse stands, nearly tripping if Cami hadn’t caught her. The brave bartender shakes her head, Mauisse looping an arm around the elder blonde woman, whispering, “Klaus really loves you, Cami. He’d be sad if you died.”

“He’d be sad if you died too,” Cami points out as they walk to the car.

“Hm, no worries.” Mauisse smiles. She pulls out a small vial covered with pretty flower paper and filled with Rebekah’s blood, knocking it back. Vampire blood got rid of hangovers and some of the alcohol in one’s system. She didn’t want to be carried because she’s such a light weight. “I’ve been thinking of actually having a kid so they don’t all end up miserable when I die. I just need to talk with a doctor about getting an implant.”

“That’s smart, but why? You told me you don’t want to carry a kid to term and deal with the screaming and crying baby.”

“Oh I won’t be. I need to find someone to carry the egg.” Mauisse shakes her head, then yawns. “I was thinking of asking Bailey or Hayley. They wouldn’t mind.”

They were so wrapped up in conversation they didn’t realize they were being surrounded. Cami lifts her head as she takes Mauisse’s keys, and pulls up short. None of the people flash fangs or vamp visages, so she isn’t sure what they are. Witch, werewolf, angry human, older vampires with facial control. It’s worrying.

“Hi,” Mauisse greets. “How can we help you?”

“You’re the doppelgänger and Klaus’s bitch,” both women bristle at their descriptions, “and you’re going to come with us.”

Mauisse rolls her eyes as Cami shifts uncomfortably. “Sorry to break it to you, but we’re expected home at 10. If _we_ don’t show up, _they_ come out to play, and _you’re_ royally fucked.” She tilts her head, hip cocked with a hand on it. “Would you like that?”

A vicious smile, and a shot of fear runs down her back when she realizes these people are werewolves. And they’re not her werewolves, the ones who know better than to attack her and her friends. The smile turns into a grin.

“Yes, I would.”

She takes a step back, grabbing Cami’s hand to run, but they’re grabbed by strong arms. Mauisse opens her mouth to scream, stopped by a strike to the back of her by another werewolf. She goes limp, and Cami would have thought her friend dead– about to transition, she realizes fearfully– if not for the steady rise fall of her chest. Cami lets out a yell before she also loses consciousness.

* * *

Head pounding, eyes aching, Mauisse opens an eye. She grimaces at the bare bulb hanging above her, lifting a hand to shield her eyes. Something hard and warm wraps around her wrist, and a cold chain brushes her cheek and neck.

She gasps at the sensation, clenching her eyes shut and turning to curl into a ball on her side. Somewhere Cami makes a similar noise, the soft rustling of fabric telling Mauisse that the bartender was sitting up.

“Where are we?” Cami croaks.

“I don’t know,” Mauisse whimpers. She feels something dribble down from her nose. “I hope Klaus and Noelle catch on fast. I’m wearing the cloaking ring.” Her ears are ringing and everything is disorienting, so she keeps her eyes closed. She wants to go back to sleep.

“Hey, hey,” there’s scrambled movement, and warm hands are holding her cheeks, “look at me. Don’t fall asleep.”

Mauisse opens her eyes, staring blearily at Cami’s worried visage. “Shit. You’ve got a concussion.”

“Oh.” Mauisse murmurs softly, unable to feel concerned. Everything is murky, like she’s floating in dark lake water. She can breath though, which is strange but nice. In, out, in, out, a steady rhythm that’s rocking her asleep like when you stand on a dock and stare out into the finite ocean. “Okay.”

“No, no, no! Stay awake!” She shakes Mauisse’s shoulder, and the younger blonde whimpers. “If you fall asleep you’re gonna die, then you’re gonna become a vampire.”

That actually gets a response from Mauisse, who sits up fast. They nearly smack foreheads, and the doppelgänger grits her teeth. “I don’t want to be immortal,” she pants, tugging at her shirt, suddenly unable to breath with the loss of the calm she’d felt. “I don’t want to be anything but me. Is that too fucking hard to ask?”

“I don’t think so,” Cami replies gently, reaching out to wipe the blood from the younger’s face, it trailing from her nose across her cheek in a morbid line. “But you need to stay awake.”

“I’m so tired though,” Mauisse sighs.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get out of here,” Cami assured. “Klaus will come.”

“I know,” Mauisse whispers. “I just… I like it here, but I’m so tired of being a target because of my connection to the others or because I’m the doppelgänger.”

“I’m sorry, Ma.”

The two take a place by the wall, unsure of the time from the windowless room, wrists shackled. They sit there, Cami making sure Mauisse stays awake. As Mauisse’s curly head lists against Cami’s shoulder, a hairpin pokes Cami, who flinches away.

“Ow! That hurt!”

“What?” Mauisse sits up, confused.

“Your hairpins.”

“My…” A smile starts to spread across her lips, Cami’s matching as she finishes, “hairpins.”

“You know how to pick locks, right?” Cami asks.

“Heck yeah, I do.” She pulls a pin from her hair, fingers tangling. She had to stop, vision blackening for a second. Cami lowers her hand and finishes taking it out. “Pull it open. Like, nintey degrees.”

Cami does, handing it to Mauisse who takes Cami’s wrist and begins to work on the lock. It’s an old style cop cuff attached to a long chain, which is lucky for her because she’s not picked anything but cop cuffs and doors. It unlatches easily, and Mauisse does her own. For having a concussion and not having picked a lock in years, she’s doing well.

Cami helps her up, letting Mauisse lean against her as the smaller woman picks the lock. It takes a few minutes, and the hairpin breaks so Cami pulls out the other one. The door unlocks and Mauisse nearly tumbles out. There are stairs leading up, and the two make it up them before they hear it.

A lone howl that curdles Cami’s blood and makes Mauisse go stock still rises above the trees, and the two look up into the sky to see the full moon at her apex. Cami swallows slowly. Mauisse’s head drops warily.

“Cami, we need to go back inside.” She murmurs, and the blonde shakes her head.

“They’ll get to us either way,” Cami replies. “Our scent is out here now, so they know.”

“Damn.”

“Let’s make a run for it anyway.” The elder blonde woman recommends. “If we get far enough, we might get out of their range.”

Mauisse didn’t think about it. She nodded in agreement, wondering if she’d get far. She felt extremely weak and out of sorts.

The pair started off in the opposite direction of the howl, following a vaguely dug out road from a car. Mauisse leaned heavily on Cami, and she desperately wanted to sleep.

It’s some time later, maybe 10 minutes or an hour or two hours–Mauisse wasn’t sure, but she knew time had passed– another howl went up. It was closer, with a group of accompanying howls. Both froze, Mauisse’s hands tightened on her friend’s. Three sets of glowing eyes peered through the dark in their line of sight, with a glance behind Cami found seven more.

“Mauisse,” Cami slowly moved the weaker woman behind her, “I want you to run.”

“Not without you.” Mauisse replies.

She feels a tug at her, just out the corner of her conscious that doesn’t belong to a concussion, and knows help is going to arrive any moment. Mauisse holds tighter to Cami’s arm.

“Cami, they’ll be here soon.” She whispers. “Klaus’ll be here, or Noelle.”

“Not in time.”

A low growl began, the other wolves joining. They tense more.

“Mauisse,” the brave bartender shoves the young doppelgänger, “run!”

The main wolf springs from the shadows, Cami screaming. Mauisse pulls Cami down so the wolf misses, it colliding with another that had also sprung at them. She shoves Cami down as another runs at them, a blur throwing it off. The wolf goes flying, slamming into a tree with a yelp.

A large, dark-furred wolf growls, standing above Mauisse and Cami. Noelle snarls at the wolves circling them, sulfur yellow eyes hard. Three wolves spring at the same time, and Noelle meets them halfway, tearing into one’s throat as the other two jump on her back.

Cami hauls Mauisse up, and they run from the fight. Two wolves take off after them, a third noticing and deciding to help.

Cami’s shoe snags a tree root, and they go flying. Cami cries out in pain from her twisted ankle.

“No!” Mauisse screams, somehow getting over Cami as a wolf springs. Cami manages a gasping sob, a far cry from the other’s choked off gasp. Blood splashed across Cami’s face and neck and shirt. The wolf rears back, leaving a gaping wound in Mauisse’s neck, blood coating her suddenly white lips. Mauisse wheezes for breath, struggling to suck in air as she bled out over Cami and the ground.

There’s an agonized scream, one that could only belong to Rebekah, and the wolf who was preparing to go again for the kill is dead, head gone. Rebekah lifts up Mauisse, bringing her close. Finn stands at the tree line, staring unseeingly at the scene.

A thick gurgle escapes Mauisse, jerking in pain. She wanted out of Rebekah’s arms despite how gently she was held. Panic was settled in, how she didn’t want this to happen. She didn’t want to die anymore. And she didn’t want to die and come back. Mauisse tried to tell Rebekah to not let her change, but the pain was too great, she’d lost too much blood, and the blackness at the edges of her vision crashed down around her.

Cami was stuck sitting on the forest floor, coated in blood and staring at the dead doppelgänger. Klaus and Elijah arrived a few moments later, a bloody Noelle behind them.

Noelle screamed, breaking down into tears. Elijah fell to his knees, head bowing. Klaus let out a yell, striking the tree he stood by with pure wrath and pain.

* * *

They return to the plantation. Klaus whisks Cami away up the stairs, and a shower starts where his room is located, the heavy sent of shampoo and body wash filling the house. Finn carries Mauisse’s body inside, Noelle trailing behind like a lost animal.

Kol and Davina, who were forced to stay behind, stands in the doorway of the kitchen, shocked. Kol watches his eldest brother and his sister walk past with the hybrid and body, heading up the stairs. He moves to follow, but Elijah stops him.

“You shouldn’t.” Elijah shakes his head. “Mauisse had Rebekah’s blood in her system when she died. No one human should be upstairs.”

“Camille is upstairs.” Kol pointed out, eyes hard.

“Camille is taking a shower to have Mauisse’s blood removed from her person.” Elijah replies.

“What happened?” Davina asks before Kol can argue.

“A group of werewolves not from here  tried to take Camille and Mauisse.” Elijah sighs. “I think they’d planned on attacking us before or after their change. Or possibly they had planned to attack us as wolves, as stupid as that is.”

“And Camille and Mauisse were caught in the fight.” Murmurs Davina, a heavy sadness in her eyes.

“Yes,” he confirms. “Camille was able to explain their capture and escape. I imagine that, had they known what time it was, neither would have attempted to run. But once they did it was too late, they had to keep going.”

Kol open his mouth to say something, likely something rude, but Finn comes back into the room. He’s changed shirts and is slipping on a coat. “Where are you going?”

“To retrieve blood bags. We have not carried any in this house in some time.” Finn replies. “Mauisse is not the type to drink from the vein, and will not last on the animal diet from her compassionate nature.”

“Do you think she’ll even make the transition?” Davina asks in surprise. “She really didn’t want to be a vampire.”

“I do not,” Finn admits. “However, I believe our brother and sister hope she will.”

Elijah nods. “I do not think they’ll force her, but it is a possibility they will attempt to coerce her into it. I will go sit watch with Noelle when they have finished cleaning her.”

“Thank you, brother.” Finn gives a grateful cant of his head, and heads out the house.

Elijah sighs heavily, knowing this night has taken a downward plunge and will likely get farther. If it somehow got better, he’d be amazed. As if on cue, the heady scent of female permeated the air, tickling Elijah’s senses. He rolled his eyes at Klaus’s antics, but did not go upstairs to stop them. Maybe it was what the two needed after what had just transpired.

* * *

Unlike with most transitions, Mauisse goes not gasp awake, her death flashing fresh in her mind. Awareness comes first, resting heavy in her supine body, then her eyes open into complete darkness. She doesn’t breathe in, forgetting she doesn’t need to now that brain functions for such are dead. Then she lifts a hand to her neck where the wound should be, finding stitches there, and a wince.

The hunger comes after she remembers all the red that came with her death, bathing her friend in it, choking on it, breathing it, tasting it as she died. Her inky world seems to tilt, and she turns to the side, falling off the bed. The sound of her body connecting with the floor sounds like a bullet to her sensitive ears. Everything else in the room is soundless, the heartbeat meant for her giving an occasional drum beat the only sound.

There’s a pain in her neck, resonating within her, and she scratches at the stitches, ripping them out without heed to the blood spilling over her fingers and down her hand, splashing with soft _drip_ , _drip_ , _drip_ s to the hardwood floor. Mauisse screams, pressing her hot forehead to the ground, crying now.

The door creaks open on old hinges, and arms wrap around her. She lashes out, shoving Noelle back in anger. The hybrid rips herself away, staring at her best friend with hurt. They stare at each other in the dark, one set of eyes glowing and the others narrowed.

“Where am I?” Mauisse demands.

“The basement.” Noelle replies. “We didn’t know how you’d react when you woke up.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“Are you going to transition?”

The two stare at each other, neither planning to back down. The door creaks open again and Elijah comes in. Something… floral tinges the air and Mauisse notices that Elijah had a blood bag in hand. She glares at him.

“I don’t want to.”

Elijah nods at her, doesn’t try to argue with her. Simply puts the blood bag outside the door. Mauisse stares at him, surprised he wasn’t advocating for her becoming a vampire. Everyone else would or has. It felt… refreshing, knowing her choice was respected. It felt like her choices were never respected, always argued against, so she fought back to have them.

“Thank you.” She tells him. “Thank you so much.”

“But Mauisse…” Noelle begins.

“No,” Mauisse cuts off. “Let me have this choice. Let me do what I want without having to fight for it.”

Noelle bites her lip, a stubborn gleam to her eye.

“Mauisse, you have several friends who wish to see you before you… go.” Elijah says, and she looks at him. She stands, sitting on the bed. “ Charmaine and Elena are among them.”

Mauisse takes in a sharp breath, eyes wide. She swallows.

“Rebekah called them as soon as she finished cleaning you up. She sent a plane and they’ll be arriving in an hour.” Elijah goes on. “She figured you would like to see them in this time, whether you said yes to transitioning or not.”

“Could you send Bekah in too?” She asks after a moment. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“Of course.” He leaves, and Rebekah comes in after he steps from view. The blondes stare at each other, unsure of what to say, and then Rebekah is across the room, hugging her.

“You idiot! Why did you do that?” Rebekah cries, making Mauisse’s ears ring. “And why won’t you transition? It isn’t all that bad as a vampire.”

“But it’s not what I want.” Mauisse murmurs. “I’d be miserable, like Kol was and Finn used to be. I haven’t even transitioned and the emotions already seem to be choking me. It hurts.”

“You’d get used to it eventually. Doesn’t matter how you get the blood. Vein, bag, rabbit, doesn’t matter.” Rebekah tries futilely. “It’s nice, being able to sense things stronger than others. And you can fight back. With such a concentrated dose of Original blood, you’ll be stronger than most others, too, so you can fight back.”

“I don’t want to fight back. Not that way,” Mauisse sighs, laying a tired head on her friend’s shoulder. “I wanted to stay human, show that I couldn’t be changed how then rest of the world wanted. And I won’t now, either.”

Rebekah squeezes Mauisse, once, then let’s go. She sits back as her friend sits up, swallowing down a lump in her throat. She pets Mauisse’s short, fluffy head of curls, running her fingers through the downy strands. Her voice in thick when she says, “Okay.”

Mauisse smiles at Rebekah in thanks, taking a gentle hold of her hand. “I’m sorry for being so selfish.”

“No, no it’s fine,” Rebekah whispers. “Me wanting you to live as something you don’t want to be is selfish. Like when my mother turned us without asking.”

Rebekah stands, going to open the door. Bella stands there with Stacey, Bailey, Cami, and Hayley. They look unsure, as though being there is wrong. But Mauisse tells them to come in, voice choked off in surprise at seeing all of them. Noelle, who had been quiet, moves to leave but Mauisse snags her hand.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she says softly. Noelle sits back on the edge of the bed as everyone piled into the room.

Bailey closes the door behind her, sitting beside Stacey. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’m going to explode with emotions,” is the uttered sentenced, getting a few wet laughs. “Can we not talk about it, though? I just want to talk about everything else, or eat ice-cream. I’m in the mood for ice-cream.”

“Let’s eat ice-cream!” Stacey joined in. “What does everyone want, because I for one am down for Rocky Rhode!”

“How are you enjoying being human?” Mauisse asks, not at all angry with her friend for taking the antidote. It was the last of it, everyone who’d wanted to change back had taken it before. This wasn’t a foreseen event, so there was none left. Stacey’s heart sped up and Mauisse shook her head. “I’m not angry. I’m not jealous or sad or anything, I’m just asking how you’re taking the change.”

“I like knowing I’m mortal again. Makes life– not meaningful, but… clearer, I guess.” She shrugs. “I only have so long on earth and now I can spend it meaningfully.”

“Spend it well,” Mauisse says simply, smile small and careful.

“I will.”

They all talked, to each other and to the group at large. Stacey and Bella went to get ice-cream and they sat around with lit candles warming the basement room. It was peaceful and Mauisse felt like and happy with them all.

There came a knock three hours later when Mauisse and Bailey talked about maybe watching a movie and Elijah came in. There was a moment where they didn’t understand why he was there, and then the two women behind him came out and Mauisse sucked in a sharp breath.

Even after nine years, she knew those faces well. Charmaine with her pixie cropped hair dyed black and Elena in a pretty sundress for the warm New Orleans weather, long hair wavy and to her waist now. The two stared at Mauisse who sat by Bailey, huddled into Cami’s side, a bite of brownie batter ice-cream halfway to her mouth. She stared back, a smear of chocolate on the edge of her lips.

Then she shoved the items into Bailey’s hands and sprung at Elena and Charmaine, hugging them to her and crying. They hugged her back, tears just as heavy, laughing when they tripped and fell to the floor.

“I missed you!” Mauisse sobbed.

“I missed you!” The two said at the same time.

“Oh, God, you’ve grown so much!” Mauisse gushed to Charmaine when they extricated themselves off the floor. “All the boys and girls must be scrambling to get with you! And Elena! Your hair! Jesus, you look like a runway star.” She suddenly notices the slow heartbeat that mimics hers. “Are you…?”

“It’s a long story,” Elena rushes to say. “But I’m all better now.”

“Good, good.” Trembling, she turns to all of her assembled supernatural friends. She introduces everyone by name, laughing in delight at how eager Charmaine and Bailey are to have other witch friends and Rebekah actually getting a matchmaker gleam to her eye when she sees Elena glance at Elijah’s retreating back _appreciatively_.

“Bekah, _no_.” Mauisse whispers in horror, but the elder vampire simply smiles.

“Oh, I may not have ever met her but I know attraction when I see it.” Rebekah replies with a smirk. “And I’m going to make it happen.”

“He’ll be so angry at you.”

“Poppycock.” She waved a hand. “Now, tell me more about this movie called _V for Vendetta_. I can’t believe you never told me or showed me it before.”

Mauisse begins to feel fatigued eventually, and the hunger is excruciating, but she refuses to give in. Instead, she begins to drift in and out, sleepy suddenly.

“Ma?” Charmaine calls, and the doppelgänger’s head snaps up. “You okay?”

“Yeah, ’m'fne,” she slurs against Noelle’s shoulder. “Jus sleepeh.”

“She doesn’t have long now,” someone says, and a few heartbeats pick up.

She feels bad about that, but she doesn’t want to be a vampire. She also doesn’t want to leave these people. Mauisse loves them all so, so much, but she isn’t sure she’d be able to handle life as the blood-sucking undead just to stay with them. It’s such a selfish thought, too, but Mauisse isn’t thinking all that straight anymore. Her thoughts are jumbling around, bumping into each other, or not even moving. When she sucks in a breath, her dry lungs rasp against her blood and muscle and bone. It’s painful.

The door opens, and a few more voices join. She knows it’s the rest. Klaus, Finn, Elijah, Davina, Kol, Marcel, and a couple hybrids she was fond of. The ones who weren’t there the rest of the day. She feels herself be lifted, shifted to rest in someone’s lap, their warm arms encircling her and their soft chest holding her up. Gentle fingers touch her hair, as a hand takes each of hers.

Mauisse feels soft and warm and light and happy and peaceful and all other sorts of good emotions. It’s nice to feel this way. To not feel so lonely anymore. She doesn’t want it to end.

And she thinks, _Well, maybe I could become a vampire if it meant I got to feel like this_. She snuggles closer to who’s holding her– she registers that it must be Klaus from the scent of earth and rain, however faint with her decaying senses– as her hands barely squeeze what seems to be Rebekah’s and Finn’s hands.

“If I…” Mauisse’s throat is paper thin, vocal cords rubbing together. “Decid… ed to live… would… you… teach me… all of… you?”

"Yes,” each of the Originals say.

All the breathing in the room stills. She smiles into the soft cotton of Klaus’s shirt.

“Blood… please?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a long time ago for SI Week and it was a blast every step of the way.
> 
> Okay so, this took me like four weeks to write. It’s long af, and I’m not sorry about that. Anyway, no, this is NOT an TVD/TO/True Blood crossover self-insert. It’s me taking liberties with TVD/TO. Assume every name given is someone I know personally.
> 
> The thing about the hybrids being controlled by the doppelganger comes from a fic I once read where Elena discovered she had just as much control over the hybrids as Klaus did, possibly more. I decided to add that the connection has an emotional aspect, and was driving my hate to last so long.
> 
> TAGS:  
> #TVD  
> #TO  
> #SELF INSERT WEEK 2016  
> #THE ORIGINALS  
> #THE VAMPIRE DIARIES  
> #MAUISSE WRITES  
> #URUVIELNUMENESSE  
> #DEFEN-ES-TRATION  
> #GIVE-ME-CUDDLES-NOW  
> #SELECTIVELY-SOCIAL-22  
> #THAT-LUNATIC-DOWN-THE-STREET  
> #IM SORRY THAT IM NOT SORRY  
> #I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS REALLY LONG PIECE  
> #AND IM NOT SORRY FOR KILLING OFF SPOT


End file.
